Chapter 10
Logan and Domino follow Fury and Dr Risman into a computer room of some sort with a large screen on the wall.
Dr Risman plugs a memory stick in and a video starts playing. It begins with the Octopus icon of HYDRA.
"Why work for the bad guys, Dr?" Domino asks.
"No boundaries. They gave me the chance to push genetics beyond anything what conventional science had ever seen. Beyond what any government allowed," Risman gives what was her true original reasons for working for HYDRA. She did feel, back then, that all those stupid rules held back proper research. Ground breaking research that could transform the human condition. HYDRA freed her from them.
Logan looks at the woman coldly. He's met this type and it never ends well.
"My job...I was part of a team led by Dr Zander Rice, we were tasked with creating a weapon...the perfect weapon..."
The video plays showing a short, slim figure dressed completely in black with a mask and goggles on as half a dozen giant robots, all armed differently with varying weapons like guns or blades, rise up through the floor. Some kind of training session.
"It was based on data bought from William Stryker on Project Weapon X."
Logan growls.
Domino glares hard. "Stryker," she snorts with utter loathing and hatred at the man who created her, the man who destroyed her life. "That's how you knew who I was. From him," she works out.
Dr Risman nods, her head bowed at the intensity of Domino's look.
"You were trying to recreate Weapon X," Logan assumes, his own anger barely restrained.
"But we failed," Dr Risman says. "Time and time again."
"Let me guess. 22 times," Domino says bitterly, guessing it from 'X-23', as the training session plays out. The slim figure is...impressive beyond belief and then they unleash 2 metal claws from their knuckles and start slicing up the robots.
Dr Risman nods to confirm this. "It was a colleague of mine, Sarah Kinney, brilliant geneticist, who came up with the solution. You see Stryker also sold us a sample of your DNA, Weapon...uh, Wolverine."
"Oh my God," Domino whispers as it falls into place for her. The pieces coalesce...and how the intruder had Logan's DNA. "They cloned you."
"You...cloned me?!" Logan roars as soon as Domino's words hit true as the only possible explanation for what Risman means.
"Not exactly," Dr Risman tries to explain. "The sample had been frozen from your time under Stryker's...care. It was damaged in the process. Especially around the Y-Chromosone. That's why it failed 22 times. Sarah came up with the answer. We scooped out the damaged bits and used another donor to fill in the genetic gaps. 95% of her DNA is still yours, Wolverine."
"Whoa, wait, her?!" Logan queries, putting the emphasis on the female pronoun, his expression befuddled.
Dr Risman nods. "The Y-Chromosone was damaged."
"That's what makes you a he, Logan," Domino fills in. "Men have a XY pairing. Women have a XX pairing."
Logan looks at her.
"Hey I'm a walking science experiment, remember," Domino points out about how she knows this stuff.
Logan shifts his gaze to Risman. She explains, "The Hydra leadership agreed to this idea on one condition. Sarah, herself, had to be the donor. The damaged DNA, including the Y-Chromosone, was removed and replaced with Sarah's X-Chromosone and a few other bits of her genome to fill in the gaps in the sequence."
On the screen X-23, as they now know her to be, continues cutting a swathe of destruction. It was terrifying how ferocious and violent she was. Not even Logan himself was this extreme.
Risman isn't quite telling them the whole truth here. She isn't telling them what it was exactly HYDRA demanded of Sarah to agree to this but that's not relevant. They don't need to know that. It makes no real difference to her point. Besides that's a very personal thing and Deborah wouldn't wish to violate her best friend's confidence. She swallows before continuing. "It worked," she says in a whisper before her voice gains more strength. "9 months later we had a baby girl who, as we would discover later, had successfully inherited your healing factor and bone claws but as she aged and the training began some...issues arose. X-23 became volatile, dangerous...our efforts to purge all emotion resulted in explosive anger."
"No. Berserker rage," Domino corrects. "Who knew it was genetic," she tries to quip only it falls flat.
Logan doesn't appreciate the joke but he can see what she means. "It doesn't work like that," he snarls out. "To control my temper, my rages, it needs emotion, thought, understanding of what you are."
On the screen it shows how X-23, after defeating the training robots, went wildly out of control, bursting free of the training room, into the control one, slicing apart the equipment in a fit of...yes Berseker rage. It shows Risman and a woman with brown hair and startling green eyes, standing there, looking...saddened before the feed cuts out.
Risman shuts off the video, looking down at the floor. "We succeeded in creating what we thought was the ultimate weapon."
"But then you couldn't control it," Logan states, shocked by how like what happened to him this is.
Domino's sympathies lie with X-23 since they are a kin. Made the same way.
"We thought we could...we thought we had her under control...but in that regard we did fail," Risman accepts. "And now she's out there...somewhere. She must be found...the damage she can cause..." she looks up into Logan's eyes. "You know better than anyone just what she can do."
Yes. Very sadly Logan does know. He can't believe this. Does it never end? Does the ruin Weapon X brought on his life just have no end?
Clark takes a few moments to let it sink in that Captain America, of all people, is asking him to join the Avengers led by that very man who is Clark's hero. In that exact moment of starstruck-dom he might even say yes...but then he reverts back to his initial gut reaction. "No," he refuses.
"Why not?" Wasp asks with a frown. She means she's all for free will and all but come on. Who would refuse to spend time with cute, adorable, fun-loving her. Not any sane person in her opinion.
"Because this is not why I was brought here."
"What do you mean?"
"Lets see, all of you are gathered here on the off-chance I was at the Xavier Institute?" he asks sceptically. From the moment he first saw them Clark just knew this didn't add up. "If you wanted to talk to me I'm not that hard to find. No. You were always going to drag me here. All of this..." he gestures round the room, "this is all a cover, a cosy pretext for the true reason so why don't we just quit the crap and tell me why I'm here," Superman demands, eyeing Commander Hill, suspecting that SHIELD is truly behind whatever the hell this is about.
Iron Man chuckles.
"Something funny Stark?" Black Widow asks.
"I warned you he was too clever for this," Tony reminds them of exactly what he said when he found out what they were planning.
"Thank you," Superman says to Stark. "By the way how's Victor doing?"
"Fine. Repaired all the damage to his cybernetics after Smallville," Tony can report.
"That's good. Tell him we'll have to catch up."
"Will do."
"It's not completely untrue, son, why we asked you here" Cap starts. "I've seen your skills...but more than that. Your heart and spirit. You went chasing after that missile without any idea whether you could survive it or not. That takes the kind of guts that makes a good Avenger."
"That's what we do isn't it?" Superman asks rhetorically. In Clark's head that's what heroes do. "At least I think it's what you do. You see Captain, when I was growing up, you were my hero. When I'm out there, helping people, in the back of my mind always is 'What would Captain America do?'. So I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that it's not a lie but it's not the whole truth either."
Cap looks to Hill. It's her show, he's just following orders.
Hill isn't one to waste time. "9 storage facilities were raided. Their contents stolen."
"Should invest in better security...but that's what you get for using Lexcorp personnel instead of Stark Industries personnel one supposes," Superman says, his voice calm, not showing any noticeable reaction.
"That's what I said," Tony chimes in.
"Stark," Hill grinds out in a warning. "You said to cut the crap so cut it," she tells Superman.
"Fine," Superman agrees. "Why was Lex storing those rocks for SHIELD completely off the books unless you intended to weaponise the rocks in a strictly not legal manner?"
"Have no idea what you mean."
"Yes, you do. Don't treat me as an idiot. Lex made a huge publicity drive over cleaning up the rocks and then suddenly they're gone, down the cracks, out of sight and no doubt hoping out of mind."
"What rocks?" Ant-Man asks.
"The meteors from Smallville. The ones that power the suits Lex made for SHIELD and that Lionel also used to power his suits...oh he stole them by the way from Lex as well. Not very secure these facilities are they which sort of brings us back to my first point."
"And you stole the vaults!" Hill cuts in, accusing Superman.
"I didn't steal anything because those rocks certainly don't belong to Lex and they don't belong to you either," Superman argues. If anything they belong to him, being pieces of his own planet. "Is this why you brought me here? To ask about that? Could have just sent me an e-mail," he jests.
"I should have you arrested."
"I never admitted to stealing them. I only said they didn't belong to Lex or yourselves. And arrest me on what evidence? Nothing you can prove in a court of law because it's classified...unless you're planning to have me 'disappeared' to some secret jail."
"Are we?" Wasp asks.
"No," Captain America answers. "We just wanted to hear your side of it, Superman. Please," he requests. "I promise no action will be taken on what you say next. It won't leave this room. My word."
Well if Clark is going to believe anyone's word it would be Captain America's but he keeps it short and to the point. "Rocks bad. Rocks dangerous. Me get rid of. Everyone lives happily ever after. That a good enough summary?"
"I like him," Mockingbird whispers into Clint's ear at Superman's mocking because like her name, she mocks people. Plus she won't deny Superman is very easy on the eye.
"And who are you to decide this?" Hill asks him, because for her that's not good enough.
"The one with the power to do it. I can see on your face how you don't approve but you know what, I do what I feel is right and if I upset people in the process I'm sorry about that. Can't please everyone...or on a bad day anyone but I don't think any of us in the room do what we do to be popular...except Iron Man," he adds on in a quip at the end.
Wasp giggles.
"Hey!" Tony protests.
"Oh come on Tony. You know it's true!" Wasp insists, still laughing.
Hill shakes her head. "And you wonder why we act the way we did when you say stuff like that," she accuses Superman.
"And how is it any worse than yours or Colonel Fury's, 'I was only following orders'," he does an impression. "How many times throughout history, Commander, has that excuse be used to justify horrific actions?"
"I answer to the democratically elected government of the United States," Hill defends herself.
"So did the people behind Weapon X supposedly since it was authorised by elements in both the US and Canadian governments," Superman retorts. "Didn't stop them committing illegal human experiments I know count as crimes against humanity."
"That's still better than not being held to account by anyone. Loose canons like you..."
"Ok stop!" Captain America intervenes.
"Aw," Hawkeye complains. "They were just about to get to the good stuff. Ruin all the fun, old man, why don't ya."
Mockingbird smirks, amusement in her eyes as she agrees with Clint that they were about to get to the good stuff.
Cap glances at both Hill and Superman. "Look we obviously don't agree on everything but the offer on the Avengers was genuine, yes?" he asks Hill.
"Yes," she concurs.
"No," Superman states.
"What?" Cap asks with a frown.
"Oh I'm certain you're genuine Captain but Commander Hill gave herself away the second she called me a loose cannon. I can pretty much guess how she would have finished that line if you hadn't interrupted. Perhaps that's why you did because you knew as well what she was going to say. For her this is about controlling me. I dare her to deny it."
Everyone looks at Hill who's face is unreadable but there's no denial...because it's true.
"And that is why the answer is no. If it was about helping people then I would have said yes but it's not. It's all about SHIELD's paranoid control freakery. It's ironic, Commander, how you justify yourself by saying you follow a democratic government yet act contradictory to the very ideal on which that government was founded; freedom."
"Freedom comes at a price," Hill points out.
"And who judges when it's too high a price? You?" Superman shakes his head. This whole thing...had it been genuine and not some smoke screen...but maybe it's more than that. It was a gut instinct that this...isn't for him. At least for right now it's not. "I'm sorry Captain but the answer is no," he states firmly and finally. "It's a great honour to meet you...all of you...well Agent Carter not so much but my point stands. My place, for now, is to stand by myself, doing what I've done since I started, to use my powers to help people."
"Now you're the one being ironic," Hill says.
"Really?"
"You speak about the ideals of this country as if they're your own but you're not of this country. You're not of this world."
Superman's brow drops down. His body tenses. He can see where this is going. He doesn't like it.
"In fact you are quite literally out of this world," Hill says with a cold smile as she plays her trump card.
Iron Man flinches slightly. He knew this from his scans of Superman when they met during the whole saving Victor incident but hadn't known that SHIELD knew. He had chosen to keep it to himself because what had the kid done? Nothing but help people.
"What does that mean?" Ant-Man asks, his gaze flicking back and forth between Superman and Hill.
Cap is thinking the same thing. He wasn't told this. Neither were Mockingbird and Hawkeye. Black Widow and Agent Carter on the other hand were because lately their primary assignment has been to track down the pilot of an alien craft that was shot down but the pilot couldn't be traced. Not so far anyway.
"Out of this world?" Wasp queries with a puzzled look. "Like what? That he's an alien?" Wasp doubles over with laughter. "An alien," she snorts. "Right. He's a little green man from Mars," she chortles.
"Krypton," Superman says sullenly.
Wasp blinks. "Huh?"
"My planet. It was called Krypton."
"I...you're serious?" Wasp asks unable to believe it.
Superman turns to face her. He's caught. No point in lying now. "Hello Ms Van Dyne. I am Kal-El of the planet Krypton. Very nice to meet you."
Janet's response is a stunned, "OH. MY. GOD."
Back with Logan and Domino they stand, looking down on a, once again, sitting Dr Risman as she continues the story of X-23.
"HYDRA moulded her from birth. Removing all distractions. Isolating her from any attachments or love," she relays, thinking back on X-23's upbringing. She remembers that they took her only moments after she was born, placed in a crib, isolated alone in a room and they left her alone, no matter how much she cried. The only attention she got was the minimal. When she needed to be fed or her diaper changed. That was it and that is how it continued for the whole of what you could call X-23's childhood. Once she was older and the training began...Risman remembers this one training exercise. It was to swing over a space, hand over hand across a metal pipe over a huge drop...and if she fell then she fell and broke every bone in her body. Luckily her healing factor had kicked in by that point.
"Because she was to be a weapon, not a person, right?" Domino snarls angrily.
Risman nods. She swallows hard. "They, uh,...wanted all humanity driven out of her. Her punishments were...brutal," she says with a wince just thinking about it.
"And you just stood by and let it happen," Logan says with disgust.
"No!" Risman argues, her voice having a sudden strength it lacked before. "Sarah and I...we realised what a mistake we had made but you can't just leave HYDRA. You know that."
"Yeah. He knows that," Fury speaks for Logan. "Go on," he encourages her.
Risman continues. "Sarah and I...even if we could leave we wouldn't. We would stay for her. We tried what we could to help the girl. We came up with a system. One of us would disable the cameras for awhile, provide a distraction while the other spent time with the girl, trying to save as much of her humanity as we could," she says in what is her only defence, weak as it is.
"Yet how many times did you stand back and allow these 'punishments' to happen?" Domino asks as she grabs Risman and physically lifts the woman upright so as to stare in her eyes. "People like you make me sick. People like you made me! They treated her...worse than an animal I'm betting and you just let them!"
"I..." Risman begins, choking up, tears in her eyes. She bows her head again.
"Back down, now!" Fury snaps at Domino and gets a hard death glare in return. His hand shoot in between Domino and Risman.
"You're lucky she's still breathing," Domino says and means it.
"Put her down," Fury says in a no nonsense tone.
Domino roughly shoves Risman back into the seat and folds her own arms across her chest simply to stop herself snapping the blond woman's neck.
"She's right," Risman whispers. "The things they did to the girl. She was never right. We tried to train her to blend in naturally with others."
"As an operative or assassin must do," Fury fills in.
Risman nods. "But when she watched other children having fun, witnessed loving families, unexpected hostilities emerged," she says, haunted by that memory. They had taken X-23 to a park where children played to try and get her accustomed to being in the presence of others. One girl with a musical box came up to her and X-23 just snapped. HYDRA covered it up but...oh god. Risman can still see that little girl and all the blood.
"What did you expect?" Domino scoffs. "HYDRA treated her worse than dirt. You and this Kinney woman tried to treat her like a person. Of course she's confused! Mixed up!" she shouts like it should be obvious. "How can you be surprised that she explodes with anger?"
"You don't know the worst of it," Risman says.
Logan's eyebrows rise slightly. How can this get worse?
"HYDRA wasn't willing to wait for her mutant powers, her healing factor, to kick in naturally so they forced it to activate prematurely."
"How?" Logan asks, sharply.
"They exposed her to a lethal dose of radiation. The assumption would be the trauma would trigger her x-gene. It did." But the suffering the girl went through, the radiation sickness she endured, the pain before her healing factor kicked in...Risman can still hear the screams.
Domino emits a hollow laugh, at a lack of any other response she can think of. If that hadn't worked they would have killed the girl. "How old?"
"What?"
"How old was she?"
"7," Risman says, her voice haunted.
"The claws?" Logan asks after.
"Bone claws. They were removed, coated in adamantium and then replaced. As soon as she was fully grown the aim was to completely bond her skeleton in the Weapon X process." Not before because that would prevent her bones from growing.
Logan has a sudden flash back to his own experience of that. "Enough" he snaps. "She's a child! Not a weapon!" he roars into her face. "How do you sleep at night?" he asks with outright disgust at this sorry excuse of a human being as he sees her.
Risman looks up, her eyes sunken and haunted. "I don't," she says, her voice cracking. HYDRA opened the door but once she walked through...once she realised what she had done...she realised the price paid for satisfying her own ego and arrogance...it was too high. Far, far too high. Sarah felt the same...only more intensely so because she was X-23's mother...literally. Risman continues, "That's why I'm here. When she went AWOL Sarah and I realised this was our chance to help her. To help her break free. But only one of us could do it. One of us had to stay and help the other escape. Sarah volunteered to stay behind so I could come to SHIELD."
"For what?" Domino asks. "Redemption?" she scoffs at the very notion.
"Yes...but not for me. For her. For X-23. I know where I'm going for what I have done. All I can do now is try and undo some of the damage before I go. As Wolverine said she's still a child. There's still a chance she can have some sort of life."
Domino and Logan share another look. The woman does sound remorseful but they're both so angry right now they can't even consider giving her any kind of benefit of the doubt.
"What triggered it?" Domino asks.
"W-what?" Risman asks.
"This was not her 1st assignment?"
"No."
"So she's been out, done her mission and returned many times?"
"Yes."
"So why not this time? Why did she go AWOL? What's different?"
"I..." Risman pauses. She hadn't been sure where this line of questioning was going but it's a good question. "I don't know," she admits because in the rush to escape HYDRA and get to SHIELD she never really gave it much thought as to why.
Fury must admit it is a good question and he's as intrigued as anyone to get an answer to it.
Domino thinks. "When was the last time you or Kinney visited her?"
"It was Sarah...just before this mission..." Risman's eyes widen as realisation dawns.
"Uh huh. She said something or did something," Domino figures.
"I...don't know. Sarah never said anything to me. I swear," Risman says, her mind racing over what Sarah could have possibly said or done.
"The question is where is she now," Domino cuts to it and looks to Fury.
"What was the data she stole?" Logan asks, since whatever it is has the strong possibility of being a clue as to what she wants and where she's going to find it.
"We're still working on retrieving it. She did a lot of damage on her way out," Fury informs them.
"Work faster," Logan snarls because wherever this girl is they have to find her.
At the Institute...
That girl was right now observing, watching, casing out the Institute, utterly unseen by all within, hidden behind the thick foliage of a tree as she crouches amongst the branches. She had been trained to be completely invisible when the need called for it. It was easier to think of this as a mission. She was good at missions. Missions were easy. Focus on the task. Slipping by the security, disabling any guards quietly, getting close to her target, then once in striking range one swift, precise strike and it was over.
It was when she was forced to confront these horrible...feelings inside her that life was hard. She didn't want them. They hurt, caused her pain and unlike any physical ones this pain never stopped, never healed, she couldn't make it go away.
They told her at HYDRA, she wasn't suppose to have feelings. They tried to drive them out. All her HYDRA conditioning is screaming at her to push them away but no matter what they won't go away. They're always there. Always hurting.
It was all his fault. The genetic donor from which she was created. He was to blame. Her miserable, painful life...it all stemmed from him. Ending him would put a stop to this once and for all.
Good. Anger was good. Better than the other feelings. Especially the ones that make her cry. She hated that. The pain, the loneliness, the torment...
No. Don't think about that. Anger. Anger at him.
He was going to pay.
First she has to strip his allies away from him. Force it to be just her and him. That was the way it should be.
She had studied her target, its defences, the weak spots she can slip through, the people within, their capabilities, their vulnerabilities, she had it all planned out.
She would strike hard and fast, take them all down before they are even aware of her and when he returned she would be ready and waiting for him.
Mission.
Focus on the mission.
The mission was simple with a single, straight-forward objective.
She was going to kill Wolverine.
Author's Note: I decided to throw in some of X-23's comic continuity like Zander Rice and Sarah Kinney, making Sarah X-23's mother, reducing Risman to be simply part of a team which makes sense. Perhaps her and Sarah essentially being best friends. All to flesh it out a bit more. Oh dear, Supes' secret is out. How does that change things? Thanks to everyone who wrote reviews. Next up; X-23 part 3.