Chapter 11

(Angela)

The next day was Saturday and one of the few times we could actually convince our daughter to eat breakfast with us. Once she was settled down in between us with her pancakes, I asked her about the incident with her spelling test. She heaved a great sigh and put down her fork. "Mommy, I'm sorry. I couldn't help it, really. I just saw the paper and wrote down everything I saw."

"Honey, you can't do that." I said mildly. "Just because you have this power doesn't mean you can use it for stuff like that."

"How come? I wasn't copying from someone else. It was MY paper I saw!"

"I understand that, sweetheart. But it's not fair to the kids who can't do that. You should only use your power to help other people, not for selfish things."

She sighed again. "I know. Uncle Charlie tells me that all the time. But it's not like I did it on purpose, you know. It just...happened!"

I looked over her head at Logan, who decided to jump in after all. "Princess, do ya remember what we talked about a few weeks ago, about havin' Uncle Charlie block your power for you?" Evie nodded and I gave Logan a curious look. He gave me a slight shake of his head before continuing. "I'm guessin' that you're still thinkin' about it, but if you keep usin' your power this way, he might not have a choice."

"Logan, I don't think..."

He cut me off. "Well I do. There's a reason why he drives ethics so deep into these kids that they second-guess themselves half the time in the Danger Room. Now I ain't sayin' that it's not a good thing, but there's a time an' a place for everythin'." He looked back at Evie, his expression softening. "An' school ain't the place to be usin' your power. Now if it's like that day you pushed Wendy outta the way to save her, that's one thing. But if I hear anythin' else about you usin' your power in class, you'll be grounded from the next five field trips an' no TV for a month."

Evie swallowed hard and looked at her plate. "I'm sorry, Daddy. I promise, I won't do it again."

"That's good princess. Now finish your pancakes, you got a busy day today don't ya?"

"Yeah, it's Jenna's birthday and we're going to Chuck E. Cheese's." Logan scowled and I barely managed to suppress a grin. "I'm gonna try and win a friend for Bosko."

"You do that, sweetie." I said and we finished our breakfast with nothing more pressing than small talk.

A few hours later, we waved at the van as it rolled out of the school gates. I turned to Logan, hugging myself when a chilly breeze sprang up. I pushed a curl out of my eyes and turned to him. "So, when did you talk to her about having Charles block her power?" I asked. He explained the dream she'd had a few weeks prior, which sounded a hell of a lot like the setting of the next base we'd planned on hitting. I could see why she'd been upset about it, but I was also secretly glad that she'd had it. After all, forewarned is forearmed and all that. "So how come you never told me about this?" I asked.

He shrugged. "I dunno. I kinda figured she'd talk to you about it on her own."

"Lover, she's eight years old. She's getting to the point where she wants to be grown up enough to make these decisions on her own."

He looked down and stuffed his hands in his pockets. "Yeah, I know. Doesn't mean I hafta like it."

"I wouldn't expect you to. But she can't stay a little girl forever."

He pulled me into his arms and held me close. "Well, at least she's got the best mother in the world to take care of her."

"And the best father, don't forget that." I stood on my tiptoes to kiss him. "Come on. We have the suite to ourselves for the next three hours. Better take advantage of that while we can." He looked at me with a mischievous gleam in his eyes, then raced me to our room. He beat me by a few seconds, but I made sure he got to thoroughly enjoy the spoils of victory.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

A week later, we set out on a mission to a base that was in a remote part of Alaska. It was early October, which made for beautiful weather in New York, but Alaska would be another story entirely. Chasca was down with the flu and Kyro didn't want to leave her bedside, so it was just me and Logan on this jaunt. I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but I really hate winter. I like weather where I can be outside all the time if I want to and winter in most of the places I've lived just doesn't qualify. Yet here I was, haring off into the Alaskan wilderness to search the tundra for yet another Weapon X facility. On the way there, I had a notion that it might be fun to just cut their power and wait for them to freeze to death, but discarded it because it just takes too long. Besides, killing them would help keep me warm.

Logan had to park the jet about four klicks to the north of the base in order to find anything that remotely resembled cover. The area we were in was mostly flat and white, which made it extremely difficult to hide something huge and black like Blackbird One. However, we did manage to find a rock formation jutting out of the earth that was barely big enough to hide the jet behind. I grumbled as I stood from my seat at the back and zipped up the white parka I'd gotten for this mission, not looking forward to the frigid trek ahead of us. Logan powered down the jet and set the proximity sensors before heading back to check our gear. Once we were sure we had everything we needed, he turned to me and I slid easily into his arms.

"Gotta go in a few minutes." He rumbled as he stroked my hair.

"I know." I replied with a sigh. He tilted my head up and kissed me softly, which made my heart clench. "Do you think this is the one Evie dreamed about?"

He shrugged. "Dunno. She said Kyro was here with us, which he woulda been if Chasca wasn't so sick. Maybe she saw somethin' different. We might never know." He stroked my cheek and I leaned into his hand. "Hell, for all we know, it's all changed anyway just because Kyro ain't here."

"Yeah, I suppose you're right." I turned and picked up the goggles I'd have to wear to protect my eyes from the wind and cold. "Just promise that if I do end up getting killed, you won't go right home. I don't want Evie to see me that way."

"Darlin', she knows about your mutation."

"I understand that, but I don't see any reason to shock her with seeing me dead, even temporarily."

"All right, whatever you say. We'll go to the cabin if we can."

I smiled. "Mm, maybe we'll take an extra day and go there anyway." I purred.

"Sounds like a plan." He leaned down and kissed me again, then lowered the ramp. I wrapped a scarf around the bottom half of my face and raised my hood, Logan doing the same, and we exited the jet.

We made our way cautiously over the snowy plain, the frigid wind finding every little seam in my outer clothing and biting into my flesh. On the upside, that same wind was covering our tracks as soon as we left them, so it was unlikely that anyone would be able to follow our tracks back to the jet. We didn't bother looking around for perimeter guards or proximity sensors surrounding this place; out here, the elements did ninety-nine percent of that work for them. We wouldn't see another living person until we were actually inside the base and by then, it would be too late – for them.

The ground beneath us was mostly snow packed into a solidly frozen mass with about two inches of loose powder on top, so the going wasn't too rough. The packed snow beneath us wasn't nearly as slippery as I thought it was going to be, since it never really got warm enough this far north for it to melt and ice back over. As if to punctuate that point, another blast of arctic wind washed over us and I shivered. This mission couldn't be over soon enough for me.

A little over an hour later, we caught sight of the fence surrounding the perimeter of the base. Had we not known what we were looking for, I would have personally written it off as abandoned. It didn't look like a base so much as a collection of snow-covered Quonset-style bunkers that could have belonged to an Inuit village for all I knew. But the native people of the region didn't surround their villages with ten-foot high fences topped with razor wire. We crouched behind a boulder that was about a hundred yards from the fence and peered into the gloom, it being mostly dark all the time this time of year, but we detected no movement on the outside. Of course, the whole point of having a facility out here in the butt crack of the Norse hell was isolation. Except for the lack of trees, it reminded me a lot of Alkali Lake in the middle of winter and I shuddered.

Once we were satisfied that there was no one about on the outside, we approached the fence with caution. I pulled back my hood to uncover my ears, noted that Logan did the same, but neither one of us heard the tell tale hum that would indicate an electrified barrier. I shrugged and put my hood up again as Logan popped a claw on his right hand and carefully cut the fence. There was still no indication that we'd been detected and I started to wonder if maybe we'd been wrong about this facility and it really was abandoned. Oh well, we'd come this far – might as well see it to the end. Staying low, we rushed to the side of one of the bunkers for cover.

Logan tapped my shoulder and I looked over to him. He tapped the side of his head and I understood the unspoken question. I took off one of my thick mittens and reached under my hood to tap my earpiece. "Yes, Wolverine?" I asked as I replaced the mitten.

"Place looks dead." He whispered into his own com unit. "Even though it's mostly underground, you'd think there'd still be some signs up here."

"Affirmative. But we've come this far…" I trailed off, knowing I didn't need to finish the statement. He caught my eyes and nodded once. "All right then. We know the entrance is in the far bunker from where we are. Let's get this show on the road, I'm freezing."

He nodded again and took the lead. I followed about three feet behind him, keeping my guard up. If someone decided to pop out of one of the other bunkers right then, I'd be at a severe disadvantage. Even with my better-than-human healing, I'd succumb to frostbite in next to no time if I removed even one mitten to bring my claws into the equation and the bulky outer garments all but negated my increased agility. At least Logan could pop his claws through his gloves and completely ignore frostbite for the most part. After all, he'd been butt naked when we escaped Alkali Lake and it took us a few hours to find clothing for him. I'd been amazed that he hadn't frozen off anything vital, but his healing factor made mine look positively human. But we made it to the bunker without incident, thank the gods.

Logan lowered his hood once more and briefly listened at the door before indicating that it was safe. He popped a single claw and sliced through the lock on the door, then carefully pushed it open. Again, I had the thought that this place had to be abandoned, because the bunker was nothing but a huge, empty space. "Wolverine, what's going on here?" I whispered into the com.

"No idea." He sniffed the air, then turned to me with a raised eyebrow. "But I smell people, so this place ain't as empty as they'd like us to think."

"Do you think they're expecting us?"

"Of course they're expectin' us, darlin'. They just didn't know we'd be here today. We ain't hit nothin' in North America in almost a year."

"You know what I mean."

He frowned in thought, then shook his head. "Nah, I don't think so. Only three people knew we were comin' here today an' one of us is back home."

"Yeah, cozy and warm with his lady, probably sitting in front of the fire sipping tea." I sighed wistfully, thinking of how nice that would be.

Logan chuckled. "Now don't start thinkin' about that stuff, it'll distract ya. Focus."

"Yes sir Wolverine sir." I replied sarcastically and he chuckled again. I turned and closed the door as well as I could, then followed Logan to the smaller room near the back of the bunker. According to the plans for this base in the Weapon X file, the entrance was in there, which was highly unimaginative of these people. The entrance was always in the back of a small office in a bunker or a warehouse. Just once I wished they'd put it somewhere else, like behind a cabinet in the officer's quarters or the third stall from the left in the men's room. We paused for a moment to strip off our outer garments, for which I was supremely grateful. Soon enough, I was barefoot and wearing only black and gray camo pants and a black micro-fiber shirt. Logan was similarly attired, except he wore a black wife beater and kept his boots on. At the back of the small room was a file cabinet, the only piece of furniture in the whole building. He opened the top drawer and felt around until he found the button that would release the door hidden in the wall. A few seconds later, a whole section of wall swung outward, exposing a set of concrete stairs that led into the bowels of the earth. We were in.

I had almost expected it to be cool as we descended, but the air grew increasingly warmer as we made our way down the stairs. We went down about thirty feet before coming to another door, this one with the ubiquitous slot for a magnetic key card. Logan simply jammed a claw into the reader and the door slid open a couple inches. He slipped his hands in the gap and pushed the door aside with a small grunt of effort, pausing to take stock of the hallway in front of us. I could see from where I was standing that it was almost completely dark, lit only by a few widely spaced lights recessed into the ceiling. He glanced back at me with a raised eyebrow, sliding the rest of his claws out slowly to minimize the sound. I followed suit, having shucked my boots in the office upstairs. I strained my ears to try and catch even the slightest sound, but I could hear nothing. Chancing detection, I whispered quietly, "Are you sure there's still people here?"

"I can smell 'em." He replied just as softly. "This don't make any sense."

I nodded in agreement. "Could it be a trap?"

"Anythin's possible, but if they wanted to capture us they'd have done it by now."

"So, go on?"

He nodded and stepped into the hall, taking a long sniff to orient himself. "This way." He said, jerking his head to the right. He prowled carefully down the hall, his booted feet making no more than a whisper as he moved. I followed a couple feet behind him, my bare feet making no sound at all. The air had a dead quality to it, not quite stagnant but almost as though the whole complex was holding its breath. Which was ridiculous, but the feeling still made the hair on the back of my neck stand up and I shuddered involuntarily. As we made our way further in, the feeling grew more intense and I finally had a word I could put to it. This place felt haunted.

Now, before anyone discounts that description, let me explain. Whether or not you believe in ghosts, it is a fact that some places just feel a little bit off. It could be the old house on the hill that your friends dared you to go up to and knock on the door when you were little. Maybe it's the old abandoned boarding school with the freaky statue out front and the pool that's still half-full of black water. Hell, maybe it's just a corner of the park that everyone avoids or the Civil War section of the cemetery. No matter what that place was for you, that place exists somewhere in the story of your life and that feeling it gave you probably lasts to this day. For me, it had been a former speakeasy in New York City just before I'd gone to Canada the first time a few years after Prohibition. It had been converted into an apartment long before, but it still had a hidden door that led to a set of stairs, which in turn let out into a sub-basement of the building. I'd only paid for a month's lease on the place, since I was only staying long enough to make enough money to continue my journey north. I wound up only staying four days and those are four days I will never forget. It's not that I saw or heard anything, it wasn't unnaturally cold, it didn't even look spooky. But the place felt wrong and my inner animal was distinctly unhappy with the place. I called the landlord and told him I was leaving, keep the money, have a nice life. He just sighed and said, "You lasted longer than anyone else. Can't rent that place to save my life."

So yeah, this base felt haunted. Maybe it was the ghosts of other hapless victims of Weapon X who were less fortunate than Logan and I. Maybe it was because of the isolation of being here in the middle of nowhere Alaska. Maybe a bit of both. Either way, I couldn't get out of there fast enough. I stopped in my tracks and whispered to Logan, "Wait."

"What?" He replied, turning to me.

"This place gives me the wiggins."

"Darlin', they all give me the wiggins, whatever the hell that means."

I couldn't help but smile a little. "Sorry. Guess I watched too much 'Buffy' with Rogue when I was on bed rest." I ran my fingers through my hair and sighed. "But seriously, doesn't this place just feel off to you?"

"Yeah, but they all do. Brings back bad memories. You should know."

I nodded. "Yeah, I guess you're right. Let's just…" I trailed off when I heard voices. Logan heard them too and we whipped our heads about, frantically searching for some kind of cover. The best we could find was a slightly recessed doorway a few feet ahead of us. We ducked into it and waited. A few seconds later, we heard them approaching us.

"…ockdown procedures are almost done, sir." Said the first voice, a female.

"Very good, Major Baird." The second voice, definitely male. "Has everything been moved to the archives?"

"Almost, there's just a few more specimens left in cryo that Dr. Horner says can't be moved until tomorrow, some kind of leak in the units."

"Perfect. I can't wait to get outta this hellhole. I sure hope the Director knows what he's doing, moving all this stuff out there."

"Sir, if I may ask. Why are we moving?"

The two people stopped about ten feet from our position. "Major, that is on a need-to-know basis and…"

"Spare me the bullshit, Colonel. You and I both know that something has the Director spooked. If it's something that affects this project and the people in it, then I damn well do need to know!"

The Colonel sighed and shifted his weight. "How up-to-date are you on your history, Baird?"

"I stopped keeping track after high school, if that's what you mean."

"It isn't. I mean the history of this project, what do you know about it?"

There was a slight pause, "Not all of it, sir. Just that there was an incident at Alkali Lake over twenty years ago, a couple specimens escaped but they were taken care of."

"Yeah, that's the story we tell you all when you're recruited to the program. The truth is a lot messier."

"What do you mean?" I could hear the suspicion in her voice.

"I mean they didn't just 'escape'. They slaughtered most of the big brains that pioneered the procedure and vanished into thin air. They were never 'taken care of'. We didn't find either of them until almost nine years ago and he got away from us again. That was bad enough until he hooked back up with his old partner." He snorted bitterly. "Now they're goddamn superheroes and we can't do shit about them without getting all their friends on our asses. Believe me, that's a headache we don't need."

"Sir, with all due respect, that still doesn't explain why we're moving everything to the archives."

"The escapees somehow found the location of just about every base that we have worldwide and they've been taking their revenge on whoever they find. No one's been left alive."

Baird gasped. "So, what are you saying? Are they coming here?"

"Unknown. Their last hit was in Central America. Their next one could be here, or Death Valley or Iceland for all we know. But believe me, you do not want to be here when Wolverine and Hellcat show up."

Logan stepped out of the doorway and pointed his claws at the pair. "Too late." He growled. I heard the sound of a sidearm being pulled from its holster and Logan made a barely perceptible gesture with his other hand for me to stay put.

"Put your hands over your fucking head now, asshole!" Baird shouted.

"Major, please do not provoke this man," The Colonel said, "shooting him will only make him angry."

"Smart move, bub." Logan said and took a step forward. "Now, we can do this easy or we can do it the other way. What're the archives?"

"That's classified information." Baird spat.

"I'm sure it is. But you're gonna declassify it, as of now." He took another step. "I promise, you tell me what I wanna know, I'll kill ya quick."

"Wolverine, listen to me." The Colonel said. "You can't keep doing this. How long do you think you can keep this revenge scheme up?"

"FOR AS LONG AS IT TAKES!" Logan shouted. "Did ya know I got my memories back? All of 'em, the real ones? You bastards stole over a hundred years from me. Over a century, just so ya could have your perfect fuckin' weapon." He took a third step and I heard the Colonel whimper. "How do you like me now?"

"Better yet, how do you like us?" I said as I moved into the hall. I noted that Logan had his claws about an inch from the Colonel's throat and Major Baird still had the gun trained on my lover. I sauntered over and she whipped the gun around and pointed it at me. "That won't keep me down forever, sweetheart and I don't lay good odds on your chances if you use it," I said with a pointed look at Logan. "So why don't you just put it away before one of you gets hurt, k?"

"Wh-who are you people?" She asked, a tremor in her voice.

"Not too bright, is she Wolverine?" I asked and she paled. "Yet another fine example of 'military intelligence'."

"Hey now, let's not get personal." Logan replied. "I was in the intelligence division with the Special Forces, ya know."

"Oh, I stand corrected." I crossed my arms and stared at the Major. "Now, why don't you answer his question. What are the archives and where can we find them?"

"I already told him, it's…"

"Classified, I know." I took a step forward and she tightened her grip on her gun. "You're still gonna tell us, whether you want to or not." Another step. "So let's do this the easy way, all right?"

"We're dead either way." The Colonel spat and Logan touched the tips of his claws to his chin.

"Ain't that the truth," He said, "but like I said before, we'll make it quick."

"The archives are in Nevada." Said another voice behind us and I whirled around. Standing there was a middle-aged man with thinning blond hair, a pair of glasses perched on top of his head. "I believe you would call it 'Area 51'."

"Horner, for God's sake, shut up!" The Colonel spat.

"Why? We're all already dead, we just don't know it yet." He replied mildly. "Besides, after what happened to these two, the least they deserve is the truth."

I heard the sound of Major Baird shifting behind me, so I spun around and grabbed her gun hand, pointing the weapon at the ceiling as I elbowed her in the nose. She let out a cry of pain, but loosened her grip on the weapon enough for me to disarm her. I grabbed her by the front of her shirt and pulled her close to me. "Listen here, you dumb bitch. I am not in the mood to play games with you. Your pal Horner here's got it right; you were dead the minute we set foot in this place. The three of you might as well tell us what we want to know and go out with a little dignity." She leveled her best glare at me and I gave her a shake. "Or you can try to keep your secrets, but I guarantee that by the time I'm done with you, you'll be begging to tell me what I want to know."

"Please, leave her alone. She doesn't know everything anyway." Sampson spoke up, a tremor in his voice. He swallowed hard and somehow had the stones to look Logan in the eye. "Wolverine, let me go. I'll tell you everything." Logan growled, but released the Colonel with a little shove. Sampson swallowed again, rubbing his neck as though to make sure it was still intact. "Come this way." He said with a jerk of his head, indicating the hall the doctor had come from. Logan and I looked at each other and I let the Major go. She glared at me again, but we all fell into step behind the Colonel as he led us into the bowels of hell.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

In the end, the Colonel and Dr. Horner told us everything we wanted to know. They told us about new subjects being bonded even as we spoke and where they could be found, about the archives and exactly what they held. But the worst part was what the doctor showed us in the cryogenic storage area. It seems that many people in the program, from the Director on down, considered Logan to be the best of the subjects that went through the bonding process due to his natural weaponry. Of course, no one had known about his claws until they captured him, but since they gave him his own concealed weapons that could not be disarmed, they were ecstatic. What they hadn't counted on was the process driving him berserk and the rest is history. Since then, they'd been trying to clone him and that project had been the focus of this facility for over twenty years. The cryo units the doctor showed us contained four of the failed attempts.

I won't get into all the technobabble that the doctor put us through, but the basic concept was simple. Every person that was turned into a weapon by the project had been forced to give blood, tissue and in the case of the males, semen samples at regular intervals. If one resisted them when they came to get the samples, they were put through weeks of "reconditioning", which is a politically correct way of saying "torture". We all learned early on to just give the samples and be done with it. So Weapon X had gods only know how much of Logan's sperm to play around with. In the beginning, when cloning technology was still a virtual unknown, they'd tried extracting only the genes they wanted, namely his X gene, and inserting it into the DNA of a fetus in the early stages of development. When that didn't work out, they tried combining his X gene with those of other subjects, usually Sabretooth, but those results were just as poor. Finally, they decided to artificially inseminate a female operative and they tried manipulating fetal development to get an exact replica of Logan.

I stood there looking at the things in those cryo units and I felt my rage at these people take on a whole new meaning. The oldest one was about four, the youngest appeared to be a newborn infant. None of them even vaguely resembled anything approaching human; hell, Hank McCoy looked more human than the monstrous things frozen in those tubes. And from what I understand, there were eighteen more of them in the archives beneath the Nevada desert. But the real bombshells were saved for last. First, the archives had more than just the bodies of the failed clones; the body of every mutant that had ever been killed during testing was there. All of them, including my Emma. Secondly, the twenty-third attempt to clone Logan was, so far, considered a success. I can still hear Dr. Horner as he gasped out his last words. "X-23 will be everything you're not, Wolverine. She's perfect and she's in our control."

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"You know getting into that place will be almost impossible." I said as Logan eased the jet into the sky. Behind us lay the remains of the base, smoke rising from the ground where the bunkers once stood, our calling card spread across the snow in bloody letters. "No one's ever gotten in there that wasn't supposed to be there."

"I know." He replied, the tension audible in his voice. "But they've gone too fuckin' far."

"Yes, they have." I closed my eyes and all I could see was Emma's sweet little face, the way she looked the last time I saw her. "But I'll do whatever I have to do to get her back."

"Me too, darlin'. Me too." He spared a glance over his shoulder to me, but neither one of us was smiling. "Let's go home. We need to plan."

AN: Well, there you have it folks, another chapter in the can...or whatever the expression should be for stuff that's written...:) I'm feeling a bit under the weather right now, so i'm gonna skip the big long list of thanks and stuff...BUT, i do have a reply...levanna: thanks for the hug, i needed it...and as for the other bit, blame the beta readers...if they tell me it's good to go, i believe them...:) And since i have three of 'em, if they all agree, then i upload and post...i'll go back through the original and see if i can't fix it up a bit...but not today, i feel like i've been hit with a Mack truck, then trampled by a herd of water buffalo...thanks for the review!

Now, all you non-reviewing readers...i still love you, but i still want to hear from you too! So go ahead and hit the "go" button next to where it says "submit review" and just say hello! I'll post a new chapter right away, dedicated to you!