"X-3 copy." Logan said. He hadn't really expected Storm to answer. Her radio usually couldn't cope with her power.

"X-4, copy." Peter said, just behind him. Peter was using Logan as cover until they got close. Would be a hell of a bullet to get right through him to the kid. Most sniper bolts didn't even manage that. And the goons down below didn't seem to know where they were. They were coming up on alert, the wind was from the base, Logan could hear them shouting. But Logan and Peter still had tree cover. Logan couldn't see Pyro or Mystique, if they had any sense they wouldn't break cover until Logan and Peter had.

"You okay?" Logan asked the kid.

"I'm fine." Peter said. He sounded afraid. This wasn't the place for it.

"On my count. Three. Two. One." Logan broke in to a sprint as he lost tree cover. He was only fifty yards from the gates. Wire fence with rolls of razor wire over the top. Fine. As long as the thing wasn't electro –

Lightning struck it.

If it had been electrified before, it wasn't now.

Claws. He barely broke stride as he cut himself a hole in the fence and dived through it. He caught his foot and landed hands and knees. He heard a lot of gunfire and a lot of shouting, but didn't feel any hits. His ears popped as the air pressure shifted. He saw bullets catching and stopping in the air a few feet from him. He looked up at the gunmen. Their faces were visored. He charged them.

,

Scott held position in the treeline, moving every few shots, though he suspected nothing the base fired would reach him. It didn't look like Peter and Logan were taking hits. Magneto was suspended in the air above, hands outstretched, silhouetted against the floodlights. He couldn't see Storm, only the evidence of her.

So far, so good. They were throwing more and more men in to a hopeless melee, John and Mystique were coming in to combat range now. Scott saw a fireball flare and gritted his teeth. The kid was a liability.

Not his call. Nothing he could do about it now anyway.

,

Storm shifted the pressure to move herself forward a little, so she was over the center of the base. Lightning danced around her, striking down in to any exposed metal she could get it to. It should keep their coms and their electrics out of action. She was not trying to get hits on men on the ground, though she had taken out one guy with a turret.

They seemed to have this. Magneto made their guns useless. Logan and Peter were lethal at close range, Mystique was in close behind them now, and doing nearly as much damage. She could hear John cackling as he set men alight. She did not have time to pity them right now.

,

Jean sat still in the shadow of the jet, listening. This was awful. She could hear a lot of gunfire and a lot of shouting over coms, but nothing that sounded like one of hers hurt. She could just about see flashes lighting the sky, some white, Storm, some orange, John. She was too far away to see Scott's light.

"X-men, number off."

"X-1." He sounded fine.

Nothing from Storm, but the sky was proof that she was still in the fight.

"X-3." He sounded winded.

A moment then.

"X-1, I have eyes on X-4." That was Scott. "Looks like his com is busted."

Jean drew a deep breath and let it go again.

,

Scott had left the treeline now. The ground fight was more or less won, and unless they'd managed a sudden change in strategy while their coms array was being hit by lightning, there shouldn't be too much resistance inside. They'd been flooding out. Magneto had his issues, but between him and Storm, this hadn't even been a fight.

Fire burst up in a column from nowhere. Scott heard a scream that sounded familiar and looked. A pile of barrels had gone up in flame and were burning freely, naturally. Peter was there, gleaming in the firelight, pushing three men back in to a corner, Logan was ten feet over from him, claws dripping blood, Mystique was round by the trucks, making more use of the cover. Where was John?

The scream repeated, and broke in to a sob. Where was John?

There! Prone and thrashing, not ten feet from the fire. That looked like John.

Scott growled in frustration. Peter's coms were down.

"X-1, John is down. Repeat, John is down."

"Base: am I prepping for a casualty? Over." That was Jean.

"Stand by."

What did he do? Did he thin the front line by pulling Peter or Logan back, or go running in to a firefight himself? Once they were inside the base, he was much less dangerous that Peter or Logan.

Scott growled in frustration again and started forwards at a run. The gate was pretty destroyed. His ribs hurt. John was in worse pain than him right now. He still wasn't up.

He was lying on his side, curled, panting and whining in pain by the time Scott got to him.

"Let me see." Scott dropped to his knees beside the boy and turned him on to his back. John cried out, but didn't fight. Scott bit back a curse. This was so avoidable. Half of John's right leg, and a sizeable chunk of his torso was blistered, some places charred, it looked as though parts of his clothing had melted on to his skin. Why had he been wearing flammable clothes?

It didn't matter now.

"Okay, you need Jean." He raised a hand to his radio. "X-3, drop back." No response. "X-3, drop back." Scott dragged John in to some sort of cover, behind a small pile of barrels. Fuel barrels. Now this made sense. "X-3, drop back, do you copy?" Okay, hang tactics. Scott peeked his head over the top of the barrels. He could see Peter, but not Logan. "Peter!" He bellowed. Peter might be slower than Logan, but he would still get John up the hill to Jean faster than Scott could right now. Peter looked over his shoulder. Scott ducked down again, panting, though every pant hurt.

Peter appeared. His metal eyebrows shot up and his mouth opened when he caught sight of John, groaning on the ground.

"Get him to Doctor Grey. Quick as you can. Where's Logan?"

Peter shrugged, picked John up, and started running.

Where the hell was Logan?

,

Logan ran, claws out, through the base. He knew One-eye had a plan, to go straight for the hostages, and, yeah, that was smart if your goal was to save mutant lives. That wasn't Logan's goal. These fucks had sent nearly a hundred armed men in to a school, and taken Rogue as a science project. Jean wasn't even sure what they'd done to her. Logan's goal was to make sure this never happened again. To make sure that none of these assholes in command made it out alive.

He ran through two men who barely even saw him coming. He didn't pause to check if they were armed. Everyone in this place was a mutant or the enemy. He heard one of them choking his last breaths away as he crashed through the next door. Command was this way. He had looked at the plans before they'd set off.

Another door. He crashed through it, splintering the plywood. Bullets. Two of them hit him in the chest. He barked in pain, but kept going. Two gunmen, one closer than the other. He staggered forwards, taking more hits, and clawed at the first until he stopped moving. He couldn't breathe properly. Something had got between his ribs. He coughed and tasted blood. He dropped on top of the one he'd just killed. He just needed a second. One hit him in the back of the head. His vision flashed white and his ears rang. He bellowed and rounded on the second gunman, fell on top of him too, panting, still half-blind.

"Logan." A woman's voice. He turned his head, still panting. "Jimmy Logan." He looked up and saw her. Maybe fifties, hair cropped short, wearing army slacks, not obviously armed. He pushed himself half way up as the bullets fell clear of his chest. She spread her hands before him. "My God, it's really you. The Wolverine. Stryker told me all about you." Logan frowned as he pushed himself to his knees. "You remember Stryker? He was your CO for years and years. You loved him. You would have done anything for him." Logan staggered upright, dazed. Something other than his ears was ringing. The name Stryker meant something, or it had done once. "Logan, this isn't you. You belong on our side. They have a telepath. Something is affecting you. Come with me. We'll find a way out." He walked up to her, claws still out. She put a hand on his arm. "Stryker would have wanted you here, advancing your-"

He gut punched her, with three adamantium claws, angling up in to her chest.

She gasped and her legs went out from under her. Something made Logan catch her.

"Logan." She breathed. "Logan."

"You made Rogue in to a science project." He threw the woman down on to her back. He could see the light going in her eyes. "She will not end up like me." He pulled the tags from the woman's lifeless neck.

JAMESON C.
849773
O +
NO PREF

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"X-1 to base, what's your status? Over." Jean jumped and lost her count on John's drip chamber (it looked about right). She picked up her radio.

"Base responding, we're okay." She glanced at John, sedated and with one side of his body almost completely hidden under bandages. That was 'okay' today. "Who do you have eyes on, over?"

"Eyes on X-2 and X-4, plus Magneto and Mystique, X-3 disappeared a bit ago. Over."

"This is X-2, X-3 ran inside." Jean smiled when she heard Storm's voice. Three out of four were okay, and Logan was really hard to kill. "I'm on the roof now, do you think I need to keep this much static up? Over."

"Doubt it." Scott replied. "We have six presumed hostage mutants here, all dressed as Bobby and Rogue were. Base, can you receive? Over."

"Affirmative. How bad? Over."

"None of them obviously terrible. Magneto's going to float them up in a jeep. Over." Jean sighed heavily. It sounded like it was over. It sounded like the danger was passed.