7

He knew he should have hung around at the mansion, waiting to see if Xavier’s friends could cough up something on the blood sample before Bob showed up, but he couldn’t stay; he was just too restless and tense.

Logan drove for a while, without any destination at all. He just let the bike loose on the road, chewing up white lines, trying to get lost in the feeling of momentum, in the power of the wind trying to pluck him from the bike and send him sprawling, but it wasn’t enough. His mind wouldn’t let go of the fact that Marcus was out there somewhere, in trouble so huge and unfathomable it was increasingly unlikely he was still alive.

If their positions were reversed, Marcus would move heaven and earth to find him. He had to do the same for him. But if he ran off with no information, he’d be worse than useless. The waiting for the info was the hideous, unbearable part, beyond the mere fact that there was so little at hand.

He found a bar and stopped in for a drink. It was the kind of place where there was so much shady shit going on - he assumed it was partially a front for a bookie’s - that they didn’t look at him twice. He sat in the back with a beer, ignoring the baseball game blaring from a television set behind the bar (which was warring with “A Boy Named Sue” playing on the sound system), and watching with half-hearted interest as two guys played pool rather poorly. It occurred to him he could play either of them and make an easy fifty, but he just wasn’t in the mood.

There was a small grill in the back, and the smell of charred hamburgers suddenly made him feel ill. It was the meat smell, the blood - it was too much right now. He gulped down his watery beer and was about to leave when he heard a familiar voice say, “Eight ball in the corner pocket.”

The man who was taking his shot - the one with the thinning mullet, as opposed to the guy with the full one - suddenly flubbed his shot, and sent the eight ball neatly into the corner pocket. “Goddamn it!” He cursed, as his friend cackled, and said, “She-it, Jed, you shoot like my dead granny.”

“Fuck you,” Jed sneered, and neither of them noticed the man who walked by their table and came straight to Logan’s.

He looked up at Bob wearily, and asked, “Why’d you do that?”

Bob shrugged, and turned a wooden chair around it so he could straddle it when he sat down. “There’s something about a guy wearing a “Free Mustache Rides” t-shirt that just rubs me the wrong way. How are you holding up?”

He just glared at him. “D’ya need to ask? Just tell me you got some information for me.”

Bob sank down in the chair, and paused dramatically before continuing. “A bit. One of the companies that has a branch in Copenhagen - Priotech Pharmaceuticals - has a rather unique money trail, which makes me think these may be our people.”

Of course - the money trail. That was Bob’s favorite trail to follow, and the most telling one, if you could follow all the twist and turns and diversionary tax shelters. Bob could, of course; he wrote the book on diversions. “Why? Where does it lead?”

“About eleven months ago, they got a two million dollar cash infusion from a corporation called Primafacie Limited.”

“At first view?” he repeated, confused. That’s what “prima facie” meant in Latin; it was generally a legal term meaning obvious or self-evident - a prima facie case of manslaughter. It was a weird name for a company. “Who the hell are they?”

Bob shrugged again, dipping his head to the side. “No clue. It has a lovely web page, but technically the company doesn’t exist at all. It’s a shell corporation, and with such a deliberately mocking name, I’m kinda wondering who the smart asses behind it are.”

“Any clue who it might be?”

He considered that a moment, then shook his head. “Sorry mate. There’s no shortage of whackers out there. It’d be easier if they were honest and polite and totally bonzer.”

He was going to ask, but decided not to. He figured he should just be grateful that Bob didn’t use Aussie slang all the time. “There’s nothing useful at all?”

“Not really. It’s based in England, which isn’t the place you wanna be if you’re trying to dodge taxes, and the payment was filtered through that new Asian money laundering capitol, Cambodia.”

For some reason, just the mention of Cambodia made him feel uncomfortable. “Where in England are they centered? London?”

“Nope. Shropshire.”

He waited in case it was a joke, but clearly it wasn’t. “Shropshire? What the fuck’s in Shropshire?”

“Umm, well, last time I was there, it was pretty well sheep infested. I don’t think it’s actually changed much since the eighteen hundreds.”

He stared at him, but assumed it was a joke. Then again, it was probably half and half - part joke, part truth.

Bob’s phone rang, but it took him by surprise, as it played the deliberately cheesy keyboard opening of Tool’s “Eleven” almost perfectly. For a moment, he thought it was coming from the stereo system. Bob opened his phone and saw who was calling before answering, in a gratingly cheerful voice, “BobCo Enterprise. How can I help you?”

Logan mouthed the words “BobCo?” and rolled his eyes, but it was such a stupid name it was possible it existed. Suddenly, Bob got a serious look on his face, even though he was staring at the back wall, and for just a second, Logan could have sworn he saw Bob’s eyes briefly glow cobalt. “Tell your boss that I’m whoever will make him answer the fucking phone immediately. Transfer me now.”

It wasn’t a command; it was a “push”, and whoever was on the other end had no choice but to obey.

After a moment, the boss he wanted to talk to must have answered, because Bob said, in that low, deadly tone, “Tell me what you know about Primafacie Limited.” Bob listened for several seconds, deliberately not looking at him. All Logan could do was wait. “Okay, who’s behind it?” A pause. “Who did you deal with? What is Priotech engaged in?” Another beat. “If I want to talk to them, who do I contact?” He listened intently, then said, “We never had this conversation. And stop paying yourself five thousand times more than your workers.” He flipped the phone shut and sighed, sliding it into the back pocket of his pants.

“Get anything?” he prodded, since Bob wasn’t volunteering.

Bob exhaled again, as if punched, and he knew then, even before the piteous look, that this was horrible news. “He knew little about Primafacie, except they’d had a very ardent backer in the U.S. government - a Colonel William Stryker.”

Logan felt his stomach turn to ice, go into freefall. Not him again. He was fucking haunting him from the grave. “What were they doing with Priotech?”

Bob looked like he might be holding something back, but if he was, he couldn’t force it out of him. Damn it. “He didn’t know. All he knew was Primafacie was financing a project known as “Alter”, that they thought would be huge.”

Logan looked at him expectantly, gestured impatiently with his hands. “So what was this Alter project about?”

“He didn’t know. All the corporate spies sent to have a look see have never contacted them or returned.”

That didn’t sound good. In fact, it sounded slightly south of horrible. “The Org?” he asked, although it was hardly a question.

“The Org,” Bob agreed, with a weary sigh.

So they killed all those people in cold blood? He should have guessed.

They liked to haunt him from beyond the grave too.

8

Logan was exhausted, but of course he refused to admit it.

Since he’d been up since he gave Angel his new flat back in L.A., and was on vamp hunting duties that very night, he hadn’t slept for at least twenty four hours, but honestly he was holding up well. Logan had lots of experience not sleeping, and his healing factor kept the black circles from becoming too unruly, and his eyes never became bloodshot.

Bob didn’t want to push him, but he needed Logan to have a clear head and a fully functioning healing factor. As soon as they reached the mansion, he told him, “Tell them you have to crash for a few minutes because you’re beat. You’ll sleep for an hour, and feel totally refreshed.” Then, as an afterthought, he added, “Dream of something enlightening.” Better than having him wake up screaming, and if he had a happy dream, he’d know he’d been pushed.

Logan did as he was told. He started yawning uncontrollably, and cursed himself under his breath for his “weakness” before Scott met them in the foyer and scowled. “I can help,” Bob told him, trying to short circuit any argument.

Logan made his excuse and disappeared, heading down the hall to his room, still yawning. Scott watched him go, then turned back and gave him a hard stare, hidden by his visor. “You did that, didn’t you?”

Sometimes he was too clever by half. “He’s been up for over a day. He needs the rest.”

“I’m sure he does, but that’s not what I asked.”

Bob gave him a deliberately irritating, shit eating grin. “But isn’t it what you should know?”

He just knew Scott was giving a death stare from behind those red shades, but he just turned away with a mild sneer. “So why did you get him out of the way?”

“Wait ‘til we’re in the office.”

He did, but mainly because he didn’t have a choice. Xavier was there, red nosed and stuffy, looking over a file on his desk. He was parked behind it, and in the filtered light coming from through the sheer white curtains, he looked like some kind of holy figure on a Franklin Mint collector’s plate. Xavier looked up, and squinted slightly from the pain, proving he still got it even when he wasn’t in full god mode. That old Belial psychic thing was really something. “You feel much better,” he told him, and Xavier’s squint seemed to ease. Scott gave him a look that was hard to interpret, but said nothing, and took a position just behind and to the right of Xavier’s desk, crossing his arms over his chest. His stance was so defensive he looked like a bodyguard, and Bob found that rather amusing. Not only was it probably on the money, but it was funny, because Scott had to know that there was nothing he could do against him if he decided to be belligerent and otherwise a comple! te asshole.

Xavier glanced at the closed door of his office before asking, “Logan’s not joining us?”

“Not immediately. I thought we best investigate this on our own before we let him in. This might upset him.”

Xavier’s cool blue eyes bored into him. Maybe he couldn’t read him without hurting himself, but that didn’t make him scared of him. “What have you discovered?”

“A connection between Primotech Pharmaceuticals and the Organization. I told him about that, but left out one of the details I learned about Project Alter that I thought we could try and prove or disprove before we clue him in.”

Scott’s posture relaxed, betraying the confusion that was crystal clear in Xavier’s expression. “What is it, Bob?”

“Project Alter, according to the CEO I talked to, involved immortality. They’d isolated a hyperactive self-repair gene and were working on using it in Human test subjects.”

Xavier didn’t seem to grasp it for a second, but then his eyes widened ever so slightly. “Oh my god. That’s why Cerebro picked it up.”

“What?” Scott asked, not yet following the line of thought.

Bob clued him in. “The repair gene they isolated - the supposed “immortality” gene - is Logan’s. The Organization must have given it Primotech for experimentation.”

And, somehow - in some way - accidentally released a plague that killed everyone it touched.

****

Logan felt the heat before opening his eyes, smelled the sweat and sex and the virus and the desert heat of her flesh. He could feel her shivering so violently - in spite of the fact that she was radiating heat like a fresh ember, and sweating like a cold beer under a heat lamp - that the trembling woke him up. Either that, or with the wind; the breeze had come up outside, and was now howling, shaking the truck very slightly.

He pulled her closer, trying to warm her with his body heat, aware of the inherent contradiction of trying to warm someone who seemed too hot to live, and yet fevers were like that. Well, to his limited knowledge.

Elena stirred, her warm face snuggling against his chest, and muttered, “Tell me again how stupid it is crossing the Yukon in winter.”

Well, there was no doubting that, was there? He pulled the blankets - one of which was actually a sliced open sleeping bag (it had much more in thermal qualities than most blankets) - over her, and let them slide off of him, because she was making him sweat. No one should be that hot - how the hell was she still alive? Not that he was complaining about that. “I’ve done stupider things.” He had extremely vague memories of crossing a mountain on foot - and naked, at least for a bit. Were they memories? They seemed so vague and choppy now, like a half-remembered dream. Maybe that was typical of the insane. Oh hell, it had to be - didn’t that explain all the holes in his memories? When you were fucked in the head, nothing worked right.

She looked up at him with her sleepy eyes, glazed from the fever that was literally baking her from the inside out. The funny thing was, she still looked pretty; Elena Brannon must have been a really looker before this thing took over. Whatever this “thing” was exactly. Even flushed, sweaty, and virus ravaged, she was among the best looking women he had ever picked up at a truck stop. Both figuratively and literally. “Somehow I doubt that.”

“Soldiers tried to shoot me with a surface-to-surface missile earlier. I knew they had it, and I let ‘em.”

She had to think about that for a moment. “Okay, yeah, that’s pretty stupid.”

“I’m Captain Stupid, believe me. But you can’t call me that.”

She smiled faintly, and he could see the struggle within her eyes. She was fighting to stay conscious, and he had no idea why. Why was she fighting at all? The odds against her at this point weren’t overwhelming, they were astronomical. If she was at all sensible, she would be trying to spend her last days in a more calm and reasonable manner, but no, she kept fighting against an enemy she couldn’t possibly beat. And for some bizarre reason, he found that wildly attractive. (Also, vaguely familiar …)

“I guess I should be glad I’m the only one with this,” she said, burying her face against his chest once more.

“Huh?”

“Whatever they gave me. I should be glad it’s not contagious and killing everyone I encounter, right?”

He considered that a moment, and figured she was trying to look on the bright side of things. If not being a typhoid Mary was the best you could do, you knew your life had turned to absolute shit. “I guess. Wouldn’t have hurt me anyways.”

She scoffed so faintly it could have been a cough. Her breath felt hot and dry against his skin. “I know. Y’know, in spite of the fact that I’ve seen you hurt and shrug it off, I still expected to see scars.” Her hand skimmed down his chest, moving to his back, illustrating by touch the areas she expected to see crisscrossed by a network of old wounds. “I’m still surprised that your skin is so soft. You don’t even callous, do you?”

For some reason, this topic made him desperately uncomfortable. “No. Nothing seems to stick to me.”

“I wish that was true for me.”

“I wish I could give it to ya.”

She paused long enough that he thought she had finally succumbed to the fever, but not just yet. She was delirious, though; he could hear it in her voice. “You’re not the kind of guy I’m usually attracted to, you know.”

“Gee, thanks.” But considering they’d already had sex, he suppose he’d swayed her in the end.

“But I’m wondering what I missed. You make me feel safe. I haven’t felt safe in so long; I hadn’t realized I missed it …”

She trailed off, and when her body went limp, he knew she had finally passed out - or fallen back to sleep rather suddenly. He touched her face, her hot and dry skin, and kissed her on the top of the head. She reminded him of someone - of some woman - but not physically, and he had no idea whom. Up until this point, he knew most women physically, and didn’t know them long enough to get their personality. So who did she remind him of?

And why did he want so desperately to save her life?

Logan woke up in his room at Xavier‘s, stretching as he sat up. He had no idea why he was so tired - maybe he was getting old, in a manner of speaking - and the memory of Elena had made him feel slightly miserable. But he knew now who El had reminded him of back then - Mariko. A stubborn, doomed woman, determined to fight a battle she couldn’t win. In both cases, he helped them in their fight, and in both cases, they died, while he lived on.

His code name should be the “Black Widower”. It was probably more appropriate than Wolverine.

He went and had a piss, then threw cold water on his face, rubbing it through his hair, subconsciously still feeling the heat from Elena’s fever wracked body. Then he suddenly began to wonder if his unconscious was trying to tell him something by dredging up that bittersweet memory. What had she said? “I should be glad it’s not contagious and killing everyone I encounter, right?”

She was talking about Eden Biotechnics. But what if the Organization had given up on using sentient mutants for weapons? Holy shit. You couldn’t put anything past them, and the fact that Stryker was dead was of no consequence; there were dozens of crazed zealots happy to fill his shoes.

He left his room and traced everyone to the downstairs area, the silver metal hallways of their “super secret” base. Bob met him in the corridor, eyes bright but guarded, even though he put on his usual larrikin air. “Heya mate, feelin’ better?”

“Yeah, in a manner of speaking. Hey, you didn’t push me, did ya?”

“Me? Hell no. I know you’d cut me if I did that. Well, try and cut me, at any rate.” He gave him a cheeky grin that wouldn’t have been out of place on a used car salesman, and Logan wondered if it meant he was lying or telling the truth. With Bob, they were often one and the same anyways.

“Have you figured out anything new since I was sacked out?”

Bob clicked his tongue, and started to guide him down the hall. “Well, kinda. A new scan by Cerebro has turned up bupkis, but I found the home base of Primafacie and thought we could give ‘em a nice, personal visit.”

He had been prepared to be told they’d found nothing, so the fact that they were actually on the verge of doing something was a relief. “Great. Who is “we” though?”

“Just you an’ me, for the moment. Seemed safest.”

He nodded, then wondered about that. “Safest? So you think it’s some kinda biological weapon too?”

Bob gave him a strange sidelong glance. “Biological weapon?”

“It’d make sense, wouldn’t it? The Organization is all about controlling and killing mutants. I’m surprised they haven’t done it before.”

Bob nodded, but muscles in his jaw seemed to twitch, and Logan knew he was holding out on him. “What?”

Bob glanced at him, something suspicious and hidden in his eyes. “The Organization is, in a curiously warped way, a type of business. Even as a deeper than black project, it couldn’t totally depend on the government to fund it in total.”

Logan stopped, and Bob did too, looking back at him. “You got something‘ to say, Bob?”

He shrugged casually, everything about his face expressing a guilelessness that Bob had never had in his entire life, even in infancy. “Just that you can’t discount their need to make money. Money is a root of evil shit as often as power and vengeance. Something to keep in mind.”

He studied him warily, wishing he could force Bob to just say what he meant. “You have a point. Just make it.”

Bob shrugged, held his hands wide in acquiescence. “It’s just that sometimes the evilest things have the most appallingly simple and mundane explanations.”

He scrutinized him, unable to believe his feigned innocence and obliviousness, and wondered if he punched Bob now, could he land it? And would it hurt him? “You know what it is,” he decided, angry and disappointed. “Just spit it out.”

“Honestly, we don’t know. All we have is speculation. That’s why I want to go to Primafacie and confirm a supposition.”

“Which is what?”

Bob hesitated, clearly not wanting to say anything. But after a moment he sighed, shoulders sagging in surrender, and admitted, “That the Organization did none of this deliberately - they just fucked up big time.”

He stared at him in disbelief. “Are you actually claiming they’re innocent?”

‘They’ve never been innocent. But I don’t think this was ever the intended end result.”

He was holding back on him; there was a lot he wasn’t saying. He wrung his hands together, trying to quell the urge to pop his claws or deck this obfuscating son of a bitch. “What was, then?”

“Financial solvency? A panacea? I don’t honestly know. That’s what I want to find out.”

A panacea? That threw him - where had that come from? He was about to ask, but Bob grabbed his arm, and uttered a spell that caused reality to collapse in on itself, before suddenly reasserting itself and spitting them out elsewhere. He stumbled slightly as they appeared in what appeared to be either a small meeting room or a large office. It was mostly empty, with just an austere clutch of furniture scattered across the wide space - an oaken desk, leather executive chair, smaller metal framed chairs that seemed to be upholstered with the same industrial gray carpeting that covered the floor, a black plastic table tucked pointlessly in one corner. There was a large window overlooking what appeared to be some type of smelter, with smoke pouring out of slender cylindrical stacks. It appeared to be the industrial midlands of England out there, the gray and dreary part that never made the tourist brochures, but had a tendency to show up in depressing British films.

There was a man behind the desk, but he didn’t notice them right away. He was working on a boxy computer, typing furiously at a wireless keyboard, a slightly bloated looking man with a perfectly round head and a balding pate, a thin fringe of brown hair surrounding his scalp like a dead laurel wreath. “Don’t even think about callin’ security,” Bob ordered.

The man now looked up at them, his brown eyes widening, and he jumped to his feet, rapidly, as if hit in the ass with a taser. But the worse part was he seemed to look past Bob, and focus squarely on Logan.

“Patient zero,” the man gasped, like he was staring at a ghost.