"Falling Angels"

Author: Notmanos

E-mail: notmanos at yahoo dot com

Rating: R

Disclaimer: The characters of Angel are owned by 20th Century Fox and Mutant Enemy; the
character of Wolverine is also owned by 20th Century Fox and Marvel Comics. No copyright
infringement intended. I'm not making any money off of this, but if you'd like to be a patron of the
arts, I won't object. ;-) Oh, and Bob is *my* character - keep your hands off!

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“I’m not sure,” he admitted. He was getting a lot of bad mojo here, but none of it seemed terribly recent. An area like this - a site of so much death and pain - was hard to visit in any case; he could pick up the psychic and emotional “afterimages” of intense violence, which made it difficult to go anywhere near war zones or former prisoner of war or concentration camps. It usually faded after some time, but in its way that was sad - often, when the residue faded, people forgot how horrible these things were.

And sometimes Camaxtli used violence as a sort of cloak - it was what he was, after all.

“Not sure?” Helga repeated in mild disbelief. “Why the hell not?” Then, in a quieter tone, she asked, “Could he kill you?”

“Cammy?”

“Yeah.”

He shook his head, and stared out at the vast expanse of water before them. It almost seemed peaceful, like a calm inland sea. “Not easily.”

She punched him in the back of the arm. “That ain’t a no, old man.”

Damn, she knew him too well. “The problem lies in his followers, not him. The more followers he has, the more blood they give him, the more powerful he is. And unlike Ares, Cammy is a smart war god - he won’t make any move against me until he knows he can kill me. He doesn’t wanna fight; he’ll only want me out of the way. Done and done.”

“He doesn’t have any followers. He was a fucking Aztec god, wasn’t he?”

“Mayan. And Incan and … Chichimec, I think. And he still has followers, believe me; he’s a cult favorite, under one of many names.”

“How exactly do they feed him blood? He ain’t a vamp. Are we talkin’ sacrifices here?”

“Among the cruder, sure, but I’m sure the smarter ones have learned all you need to do is bless a recent battlefield or scene of violence in his name - any of them - and he gets all that blood. It’s a retroactive power feed.”

“How lucky for him. Could that work in someone else’s favor? I mean, could the same ground be blessed in someone else’s name and be taken away from him?”

“Oh yes, without a doubt, but it has to be done very recently afterwards. It won’t work for Cammy if the blood is old, and the same is true of everyone else.” He took a deep breath and briefly closed his eyes, preparing to shift his mode of vision.

“If people don’t die in his name, does he starve? Does he wither away to a husk?”

“No.”

“Well, there goes that plan.”

“Gods can live without worship; nowadays they kinda have to, and believe me, that’s better for everybody. The ones that love it or feed off that psychic energy are not the type of beings you want to invite to dinner. And Cammy’s persnickety anyways - he insists even his followers aren’t worshiping him the right way.”

“They don’t suck his dick enough?”

Bob had to force himself to swallow another laugh. Gods, he had missed her. “Not exactly, but close.” He opened his eyes, and the world had changed. Well, no, but his perception of it had.

His physical form was, in all honesty, quite malleable; he didn’t like to do it, but if he had to. He could alter his body to fit a situation. Low air, for example, or, in this case, to see the threads.

They were the threads of energy that ran through everything, that were in fact everything. Everything was energy, as any physicist could tell you, and if he allowed himself to, he could feel them as well as see them, but frankly that got to him after a while. It was like being constantly afflicted with static cling. Right now he got a mild sense of them, enough that he could feel the hair on his arms standing on end, but he ignored it as best he could. The threads surrounded him like a spider’s web of white light, and while he gestured with his arms, he didn’t need to - it was just habit.

He raised his arms like a conductor while he concentrated, focusing on all the energy rending the air around him, feeling it twining around him like they slender threads they resembled.

“Uh, old man, what’re you doing?” Helga asked, sounding just a little nervous.

“I need a closer look,” he said, slowly spreading his arms. He felt the mild resistance, like gravity itself was trying to fight him, but of course it didn’t hold out for long. He vaguely recalled Xavier’s friend - Erik, right? - and how he obviously thought he was hot shit because he could manipulate magnetic fields. Bob wondered how’d he feel if he used those same fields against him - hey, undoubtedly old Magneto was very good at what he did, but Bob knew he was better. He could manipulate every single thing he could see, and even things he couldn’t. When it came down to it, Magneto - powerful mutant or not - was just a Human being; he was not.

Bob wondered what Jean was now.

The lake seemed to split down the center, the water moving back as if being plowed by some heavy, invisible object, and the split became a seam, and then a gap. Soon they could see the bottom of the lake as it parted, water held up on the sides as if behind unseen walls.

“You know, you keep doin’ shit like this, and people will think the Bible’s real,” she noted wryly.

“Well, there’s no one around but us chickens.” He took another deep breath and closed his eyes, changing his vision back to normal. He knew he should one day let a quantum physicist see them - there’d be their string theory confirmed for good.

“So can I call you Moses now?”

“No. If you looked for a parallel between me and a Bible character, the closest one would be Lucifer, and having known the real one, I’d rather not be grouped in that crowd.” There was an alley between the water, maybe six feet wide, and the now bare dirt was a combination of muddy and rubble strewn: chunks of concrete rose up like broken teeth, fallen tree stumps laid like severed limbs covered with the slime and rot of the grave, and oddly enough, there was a burned patch, where the soil had been scorched seemingly to the bedrock.

“You mean you’re not the big hizzonor yourself?” She teased.

He opened his eyes, vision back to normal, to shoot her a sarcastic look. “If I was, wouldn’t you be salt by now?”

She grinned at him, her green eyes bright with mischief. “If I was, would you lick me?”

He smiled and shook his head, looking back at the parted lake. “That’s what I love about you, hon. Always turnin’ a negative into a positive.”

“Somebody has to.”

“Indeed.” He looked down, and was surprised to see that here, even on the “shallow end” of the shore, it was about an eight foot jump down to wet earth. He was glad he wore his old boots, because he was about to get mucky. Oh, what the fuck? He didn’t have to get mucky. “Wanna come with me?”

“Sure, why not? Better than freezing my tits off here. You sure the water won’t rush in on us?”

He looked back at her, grinning in a way that Luke had always called “dumb ass”, but hey, Luke was inclined to call most things dumb ass. “Sweetie, I can fight a war god. Do you think I can’t hold back a lake?”

“I’m sure you can, but can you overcome your natural urge to be a complete asshole?”

He had to admit she had a point there. “Trust me, darling, it’s too fucking cold for me to be an asshole. I’m not freezing’ my apricots off for a joke.”

To be funny, she pretended to study him before she bothered to answer. “All right. I guess I’ll trust you this once.”

He pulled her into his arms, and dipped her as if they were doing the tango. She grinned up at him, tail twining around his waist. “You won’t regret it,” he promised, giving her a kiss on the forehead. And then he teleported them down to the space between the two halves of the lake, so when they straightened up, they were quite literally down in it. Man, was this equally beautiful and creepy.

The lake was very deep - to say the walls of water towered twenty feet over their heads was erring on the side of caution; it was as gray as stone, and he knew that there couldn’t be anything living in here. And not only due to the cold.

Hel looked around and whistled low, impressed. “I’ve never been in a canyon made of water before.”

“Neither have I. Kinda pretty, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. It’d be prettier if the water was blue.”

“All the silt and pulverized concrete - it’ll be gray for a long time, until it all settles.” He walked down the “aisle” into the deeper part of the lake, the mud squelching under his heels. Some of the concrete, the harder stuff filled with wire mesh and stronger stone, was still relatively intact in jagged chunks, and he stepped over it carefully. The first fallen log he came to had been stripped of its branches and some of its bark by the force of the water, but was amazingly whole in spite of it all, even after all this time under deep, cold water. But then again, the trees up here had probably become very resilient buggers out of necessity. This was a hard and unforgiving part of the country, and it made so much sense that Logan had been forged here, his personally honed and set in adamantium for all eternity. It was no coincidence he was a resilient bugger too; he’d had no choice.

Bob crouched down in front of the first scorch mark he came to. It was an amorphous splotch that stretched out underneath the water walls on either side, but he could see enough of it to see there was nothing in it capable of containing moisture - it was the single anomalous dry spot in a muddy lake bed. He touched it, ran his hand over the soot, the remains of earth flash fried down to its very molecules, and tasted just a hint of energy. Powerful, the psychic equivalent of a nuclear detonation; as such, all subtleties were lost, and most of the “flavors” burned away. But there were traces … yes, Jean had been here. Something of Jean had been involved - but how much? There was a sense of something else, but it could have been all her - or at least most.

“What exactly happened to Carrie?” Helga asked, still splashing in the mud behind him. “I’m not clear on that.”

“No one is. And her name was Jean.”

“Whatever.”

“She was a favorite of yours, I can tell.”

“I didn’t get that silly repressed bitch at all,” she said, with more honesty than spite. “I mean, she had some power, but did she let loose with it? Nah, she just hung around and played good little schoolmarm. And she obviously had the screamin’ ya-yas for Logan, but did she fuck him? No, she stuck with the anal retentive Boy Scout who was apparently afraid of hurting a hair on anyone’s chinny chin chin, so they could get together and be very repressed New Englanders together. I mean, there’s a snowball’s chance in Maui that Boy Scout’s okay in bed, but the anal retentive never are, in my experience. If you can’t just relax and let go and have fun, let your guard down, you’re not good in the sack, full stop, end of story. And if you’re a control freak too, that goes double.”

“Logan lets his guard down?” He was just curious about that. Helga often had interesting insights into people, whether she slept with them or not. But usually the sleeping bit helped immensely.

“Oh yeah. I think that’s why he doesn’t have those nightmares after sex. I mean, I think he thinks it’s exhaustion - the boy’s got stamina, goddamn him; gotta love that. Also, he’s built like a brick shithouse, and how can you not be impressed by that? But I think it’s ‘cause he’s not expecting the fight.”

He looked back over his shoulder at her. She was staring at one of the water walls like it was a dark mirror, and giving it an experimental poke with her finger. The water bent under her fingertip, like it was nothing but a sheet. “You mean because he’s let down his guard, it makes him less vulnerable to his own memories?”

“Yeah. Weird ass paradox, I know, but I think he’s always fighting, so his mind fights back.”

“His own worst enemy.” That did make a sort of twisted, awful sense. Just as his theories with Jean and Camaxtli did. “Ever told him?”

She scoffed, placing her hand flat against the water. “And ruin it for him? Are you nuts?”

That made sense too. She withdrew her hand quickly from the wall and shook it - the water was still bitterly cold, even if it didn’t come in contact with her flesh - and he realized she was very fond of Logan. It wasn’t just lust anymore, there was something else there now as well. Not love, not exactly, but Bob knew if he was out of the picture, she would be with him. Logan was fond of her too. He wasn’t surprised; Hel and Logan had a lot in common, whether either of them admitted it. They were both strong and fearless people, both survivors, both people who had come out the other side of what could be called dark nights of the soul. That was precisely why he liked them. To be tested and found wanting was one thing; to be tested, found wanting, and keep going was another thing entirely. That was why he chose them to help him fight the gods - who in their right mind would? Mortals going up against any god - nonetheless several, or a crazy one, or both - were instantly doomed. Both Logan and Helga knew this, accepted it, and went ahead anyways, because that’s the type of people they were. They could both represent the best of being mortal, and neither knew it, or simply refused to accept it. That was yet another mark in their favor.

He stood up, wiping his sooty hands on his pants, and tried to explain his theory about Jean to her. “I think Cammy, when she was acting as his aegis, opened a gateway in her mind.”

She turned to face him, quirking a green eyebrow. “A gateway? I’m assuming not to teleport.”

“No. But the thing is, I’m not sure if he used it, or one of his friends used it, or if he did nothing but spur Jean’s power development. It’s not like he’s gonna tell me; he’s enjoyin’ leavin’ me in suspense too much.”

“But he spurred her power development to what, exactly? Is she his avatar?”

Bob shook his head, and touched the water wall himself, but since he controlled it, he was able to push his hand right through it, up to the wrist, although no water leaked out beyond his skin. “In her Human form, she wouldn’t have been strong enough - he’d have blown her brain matter straight out her ears.” He closed his eyes, feeling his hand go numb, and mentally sent out, as loudly as he could *Jean, can you hear me? Respond. I am not here to harm you.* Of course, if she’d just been a mutant telepath, he’d have killed her - but he was pretty sure she wasn’t simply that anymore. After a moment of nothing, he added *Logan sent me.* Would that do it? If there was enough of the Human Jean left, it might. She had been trying to contact him; it meant something. The key to her humanity could be the people she knew and loved. He was someone she partially knew but never trusted; she suspected his motives for befriending Logan, as well as who ( or what) he was, and what exactly he did. He had to respect her for that. Scott just knee jerk hated him because any so called “friend” of Logan’s had to be bad news.

“Let me guess - the key to that explanation is “in her Human form”.”

“Yes. But Cammy loves upsettin’ the apple cart. He doesn’t like the other Highers, and he’s disdainful of the supposed Lowers.”

She considered that thoughtfully. “So he wouldn’t want an avatar on this plane, but he might enjoy fucking with the other Highers.”

“And adding more chaos to the chaos already throwing the Higher Realms into anarchy.” Bob pulled his hand out of the water, and shook it to bring the circulation back. It felt like his blood was turning to ice in his veins. At her questioning look, he shook his head. “She’s not here anymore.” It was very disappointing too, because she could be anywhere - it was possible she even jumped dimensions, if Cammy gave her the power.

“How are gods made, exactly?” She asked, cocking her head. “I mean, do you just knock a goddess up? I get the feeling it doesn’t quite work like that. After all, you said Fenrir was a case of parthenogenesis, right?”

“Yes. It sort of depends. It can be as easy as that, but it isn’t usually.”

“Is Jean Human anymore?”

“Part of her is.”

Hel’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “So what’s the rest of her?”

Bob didn’t answer, because he couldn’t: he had no proof, he really didn‘t know for certain. But he feared he knew the answer anyways.

7

Marcus was the first to break the spell. “One shot,” he said, as both Storm and Scott hit the deck.

Logan could feel himself nodding, although he couldn’t see any part of himself, or Marcus, or anyone beyond Storm, Scott, and the now freaked Matt Parker - they were viewing Brendan’s perfectly eidetic memory straight through his eyes and ears and ( yes, although Logan had no idea if anyone else was getting it ) his nose. Perhaps out of deference to Brendan’s need for privacy, Bren’s thoughts were muted, as if Xavier had shunted those off to the side.

“What?” Rogue asked, sounding slightly ill. She insisted on being included, but it was still obvious, even in this psychic blind spot, that the violence had sickened her. Shootings in real life were never quite what they looked like in movies or on television.

“A single bullet,” Logan clarified. “It hit Storm and passed through Scott.”

“Did it lodge?” Marcus asked, and Logan knew he was asking him.

“I caught a blur,” he told him. “I think it passed out through Scott’s chest at the side, probably caroming off a bone, maybe the ribcage. You said he had a collapsed lung, right Professor? So it must have been a high velocity shot to go through two people and still have enough momentum to keep going.”

“I’m going to be sick,” Rogue said.

“Armor piercers, I bet,” Marc said, ignoring that. “And that guy’s a hell of a shot to wipe out two people standing at odd angles with a single bullet.” They could see the dark movement of someone on the roof of the building across the way, obviously the sniper who took them out.

“Okay, at least we know it’s a man.”

“How do we know that?” Brendan asked curiously.

“Broad shoulders,” Logan told him. “Way too broad for any female.”

“I knew it wasn’t a crow,” Brendan muttered.

As things progressed, Logan got a sense - well, a smell - of Brendan’s increasing anxiety. He had not been comfortable with this to begin with, and now he smelled overwhelmed. “You did good, kid,” Logan reassured him, feeling as awkward as Bren surely felt. “You did everything right. You know that, don’t you?”

“Do I?” He replied nervously. But he also sounded slightly relieved. “I - I didn’t know what to do.”

“You probably saved their lives,” Rogue chimed in, happy to encourage him. Bren was certainly an insecure fellow, wasn’t he? Was it the demon thing? “They owe you one. Matt does too.”

“I think Matt paid me back.” Perhaps understanding how that could be interpreted, he added, “I mean, getting’ the guard that grabbed me and all.”

Just from the increasing sour smell of his sweat, Logan knew he hated them seeing everything after he “demoned” out. But he really didn’t know why: the kid obviously showed up here with some survival skills, which most of the suburban refugees that washed up at Xavier’s didn’t have. And being a demon that made him invulnerable to some things that Humans were, as he had proved to the shock of the Organization. “You oughta help out in the self-defense classes,” Logan continued. “You could teach some of these other kids a thing or two.”

There was a pause before Bren replied, somewhat hopefully, “You think so?”

“Yeah, I - “ But Logan stopped dead, as Brendan’s eyes, in memory, focused on an Asian woman in black body armor, speaking into her radio.

“Logan?” Xavier asked curiously.

He knew her. He didn’t know how, but … he knew her. He felt it in the twist of his gut, in something like an itch in the back of his mind. Even as the memories moved on, Logan could still see her in his mind. Her glossy black hair sleeked back like a helmet, her almost feline hazel eyes … yes, yes, he knew her, like he knew Stryker.

“Bud?” Marc asked. “Still with us, man?”

“Xia,” he said, not sure where that had come from. “That’s Xia.”

“Who’s Xia?” Marc wondered.

“I don’t know,” he admitted, even though she remained familiar … and yet as elusive as a word on the tip of his tongue. Damn it, he hated this.

“A woman you worked with in the Organization?” Xavier said. It wasn’t really a question. “Is she a mutant?”

Logan started to say something, then stopped, and tried again. “I’m not sure.”

He wasn’t; he had no idea at all. The only thing he was sure of was that he did know her. And somehow, in some way, he had failed her too.

“Is this a good thing or a bad thing?” Brendan wondered. “That you know one of ‘em?”

“It wasn’t good with Stryker,” Rogue noted.

The useful memories were pretty much at an end - Brendan took off across the street as the cops approached - and the phone rang, startling all of them. Logan was relieved, as it spared him from trying to figure out who Xia was and how he knew her, at least for now.

Xavier took them out of the vision abruptly, and it was slightly disorienting, one reality swapping for another. Logan rubbed his eyes and waited for the disorientation to past, only to find the woman still burned into the back of his retinas. He wished he knew for certain that she was friend or foe - for the moment, he had to assume she was foe. She was with the Organization after all. But he wondered how much she knew about his past - his real past.

Xavier picked up the phone, and said with an unusual amount of coldness, “Yes?”

Suddenly Logan could hear the other person on the end of the line as clearly as if the receiver was pressed to his ear. Xavier was obviously “sharing” the call with everyone. “Charles Xavier?” The voice was smooth, male, with a clipped British accent. Two to one it was another demon, or at least a mutant that Xavier had no hope of telepathically reading.

“Yes.”

“Very good. I suppose you know why I’m calling.”

“What is it you want?” He asked, with barely veiled hostility. Xavier glanced at Logan and shook his head; no, he couldn’t read him.

“The discs. Deliver them to us and I assure you we will leave you and your children alone from now on.”

Everyone exchanged blank stares. What the hell was he talking about? “What discs?” Xavier asked.

The man chuckled without mirth, and when he spoke, his voice was as smooth as velvet. “Playing dumb doesn’t become you, Professor. The discs you took from Stryker’s office. We want them back.”

“We didn’t take any discs from Stryker’s office,” Rogue exclaimed, then slapped her own hand over her mouth in horror. But the guy on the phone couldn’t hear her.

She was right. According to Kitty, who actually went in there, there were no computer discs - she said there looked to be some kind of “locking tray” where they might have been kept, but it was empty. She only took the hard copy files, and of those ( she had to go in five times to bring them all out ), only about a half dozen had anything to do with Stryker’s “program” and Weapon X. It was assumed that Stryker’s remaining people had started cleaning out the office before they had arrived, so they had to hurry and get what they could. “We took no discs, only files,” Xavier told him. “We turned all relevant ones over to the President.”

“Uh huh,” the man said, with obvious sarcasm. “Do you really think those discs are worth the lives of your students?”

“I told you, we took no discs, only files. The discs were gone when we arrived.”

“Bullshit. What do you hope to accomplish with stonewalling? Have you not been paying attention?”

“I am telling you the truth. We don’t have your discs. Perhaps you should ask Stryker’s people what - ”

“Is Weapon X there?” The man interrupted.

Logan felt his stomach twist once more, his blood turn cold. Oh god no. Marc looked at him, but suddenly realizing he’d told no one else, looked away.

But too late. Logan could feel Xavier’s eyes on him, trying to urge him to look back, but Logan stared down at the carpet, refusing to meet his eyes. Why did he come back here?

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Xavier lied.

“What the hell is Weapon X?” Rogue whispered, and Logan glanced up, mildly horrified to see she was staring at him.

“It’s me,” Marc said.

“No,” Logan said weakly, and mostly due to shock. What the fuck was he doing?

“I’ll tell ya later,” Marc whispered to Rogue. “It’s a long story.” Marcus looked back at him and quirked his eyebrow in what was probably the equivalent of a wink. Why did he do that? Why was he covering for him? It wasn’t going to work with Xavier.

“Oh, I think you do,” the smarmy British guy said, his voice oozing a sleazy kind of triumph. “For a telepath, you’re a remarkably bad liar. You let our old buddy X know we’re ready for him, if he wants another rematch, but this time no Humans - just mutant on mutant action. I don’t think he’ll fare as well this time. But if he wants to come back and stop pretending to be something he’s not, we’re willing to forgive.”

“Tell them they can suck my dick,” Marc snapped, feigning irritation.

“What does Weapon X mean exactly?” Brendan asked him quietly.

Marc shrugged. “Means they tried to turn me into a mutant killing weapon, that’s what. They failed.”

Brendan glanced at his barely concealed Glocks, and asked, “Are you sure?”

They were buying it. And why not? Marc wasn’t exactly a Gandhi sort of guy. He wasn’t exactly a “kill ‘em all and let god sort ‘em out type” either, but sometimes he veered close to that line; he could be zealous in his need and definition of “self-defense”. But what he didn’t understand was why Marc was taking the heat off of him - what was he gonna get out of it? The kids couldn’t possibly be more scared of him.

“I thought the Organization had disbanded,” Xavier said, ignoring everything else. He wasn’t going to call Marcus on the charade, then, or at least not in front of the kids.

“In a manner of speaking. But you know what they say about bureaucrats, don’t you? They never die, they just get transferred.”

“What are you now?”

“That’s right. This is the part where I tell you of all our nefarious plans, so you and your remaining group of loosely trained wonder monkeys can sweep in and save the day. We’re now the late night crew at the International House of Pancakes off Route 23, and we plan to taint all the maple syrup, and steal everyone’s wallet when they pass out. ”

“That could actually work,” Marc said, giving him a sarcastic grin.

Logan rolled his eyes. “Tell him to keep his day job.”

“You have thirty five minutes to bring the discs to the site of the old Club Exstacy - you know, the mass murder site? Someone’s tearing it down and putting in a Krispy Kreme - and we simply want the discs. But if you want to bring Weapon X and whatever kids with powers you can scrounge up, that’s fine, but understand this - we don’t want a fight. But we are prepared and able to take you all down without breaking a sweat. If you don’t want anyone getting hurt, you will do the smart thing and simply give us what we want.”

“We do not have the discs you want,” Xavier said once more, his patience wearing thin. “You are mistaken. You have the wrong people.”

“The clock’s ticking, Xavier. You should really burn rubber. Kisses to X.” They then heard the hollow click of a severed connection, and the drone of an open line rushed in. It ended for all of them before Xavier dropped the receiver back in its cradle.

“Do you really think they can take us?” Marcus asked. Logan wasn’t surprised to find he was looking straight at him.

Logan slumped back in the chair, and sighed wearily. “If they’ve studied up on us, yeah, you bet. They’re cocky, but not without good reason.”

“So we’re fucked?” Rogue asked.

Logan scowled at her, aware that Jean, if she was here, would chide her for the use of language. He had never cared before, so why did he care now? Just because Jean wasn’t here to do it? Maybe, and that very thought was depressing. “Not exactly. They’ll be ready for the expected, but not the unexpected. Things didn’t go like they wanted earlier in the day ‘cause they weren’t expecting Bren over there to be a demon. We just need something they haven’t anticipated.”

“I’ll come,” Bren said, with a sort of fragile courage.

“No,” Xavier said firmly.

“No,” Logan agreed, and Brendan looked at him in wide eyed surprise. “They’ll expect you this time.” he explained. “They underestimated you once; they won’t do it again.”

Brendan sagged as he sighed, trying to cover up his relief with faked disappointment.

“We have one wild card,” Marcus said. He obviously meant himself, but he didn’t clarify.

“Let’s get Sadiq back in on this, if he’s willing,” Logan quickly interjected, as it looked like Rogue was about to ask Marc what he meant. “Since he’s an Eden kid, I bet they got bupkis on him.”

Xavier nodded, lips thinning to a grim line. “I hate to involve him in this. We shouldn’t have to fight.”

“Yeah, well, we got no choice now do we? We don’t have the motherfucking discs.” Logan simply imagined Jean giving him a dirty look for the curse, and it made him feel better. Why did they think they had the discs? What the fuck was on them that was so important they felt they had to drop to violent extortion to get them back?

And, hey - if they didn’t take the discs in the first place, who did?

“Could we fake it?” Rogue asked. “Give them some discs and hope it buys us some time?”

Marcus shook his head. “They’re gonna test ‘em, sweetheart. They ain’t just gonna take whatever roms we give ‘em and beat cheeks. They’ll have a laptop there to verify.”

“What about those discs Static gave me?” Logan suggested, aware he was grasping at straws. ( But why did Xia make him think of Static? )“Surely they’ve got official codes on ‘em, and they were so fucked over by magnetic pulses, that’s probably the only thing they’ll be able to immediately verify. We can blame the extensive damage on proximity to Magneto.”

Marc continued to shake his head. “We have to assume she downloaded those files with a different ‘crypt key. After a security breach like that, you bet your ass they changed it.”

“Rogue,” Xavier said, affecting his calm “no, the shit is not about to hit the fan, trust me” voice. “Brendan, could you go fetch Sadiq and bring him here? And please, take your time.”

“You’re gonna plan something without us, aren’t you?” Rogue asked, more weary than accusing.

Logan threw up his hands in a type of shrug. “Sorry kiddo.”

She made a noise of disgust, getting to her feet and grabbing Brendan’s arm, pulling him up from the couch as well. Despite his reluctance, he looked pretty eager to leave. “One of these days you’re gonna have to include me,” she complained, leaving the room with Brendan in tow. Marc got up and went to the door after them.

“Marcus,” Xavier said, still using the same voice. “Could you leave Logan and -”

“No,” Marcus interrupted, shutting the door. He leaned against it, and stared at Xavier. “I know about it, and I’m not leaving. In fact, I think you should drop it, Chuck. This is Logan’s business, and even if those Organization fuckheads have no respect for his privacy, we still should.”

Logan was pretty sure he was too jaded to ever be shocked by anything, but he was now. “I don’t get it,” he told Marc honestly. “Why?” Why help him, why take the blame, why come to his defense. It made no sense, and he didn’t know which specific question to ask.

Marc just shrugged a single shoulder. “You’re my friend. Isn’t that good enough?” Logan was still trying to believe that - why was that so hard to believe? - when Marc turned his gaze to Xavier, and grimace sharply. “And it’s not like you’re the only one who ever held back on info around here.”

Xavier had the decency to wince slightly. “I appreciate your desire to help Logan, Marcus, but now is not the time for this.”

“No, it’s not,” Logan agreed, his head almost aching with all this information. Xia and the Organization, Weapon X and Marcus, missing discs that could - in all likelihood - destroy what was left of Stryker’s group. He levered himself out of the chair, and said, “I need the phone.”

“Calling Bob again?” Marcus asked.

Logan shook his head as he approached Xavier’s desk. Xavier had moved back, out of his way, and seemed to be giving him a look that was partially apologetic, and partially scolding - this was not over, not by a long shot. “No. We were in New York before, and probably the whole demon community around here know I’m his avatar. I’m wondering exactly what that will bring me.”

He hated to do it, but if you had a weapon in your arsenal, there was no point in not using it when you needed it the most.