The fact that the little shed-mostly scrap wood and aluminum siding-had been painted sand colored probably helped camouflage it,although when the sun hit it at an angle it cast a shadow so obvious it was unavoidable.It was small and narrow-no bigger than six and a half feet high,and maybe half again as wide-and Erasmus knew it was too small for a lab.It also might be someone's idea of a duck blind,a trap for Enigma hunters,which is why he let Lucretia lead the way:she'd sense if something was wrong.

She seemed to pause before trying the narrow door,which was still locked but fruitlessly,as the top hinge had rusted and fell away as she tried the roasting hot doorknob (but she brought gloves,so what was she complaining about).The whole door fell inward,leaning off to one side like a drunk holding on to the doorjamb by his fingernails as the floor pitched and yawed beneath him.

Lu kicked the other hinge off so the door could be shoved aside,then went in,looking around cautiously as if expecting attack even in this narrow,overgrown lean-to.The only thing that attacked was the air:it was so hot in the little shed it was like walking into a fucking pizza oven.He could feel sweat instantly spring out on his face and neck,on every  exposed area of skin.And it smelled like baked dust,stale and old,a building not so much abandoned as left to burn and die.

It was also perfectly empty.

Lu turned towards him,scowling darkly,as he filled the slender sliver of a doorway.With her black hair pulled up in a high ponytail,and khaki walking shorts exposing slim,almost bony white legs,she looked a lot like her mother.Too bad she had been Human."There's nothing here.Look,dad,I really think we should go.I don't know who Logan's friend was,but he's... powerful.I don't think we can take him."

"Don't be silly,girl.First of all,Logan doesn't actually have friends-just people he doesn't beat up right away.And second of all,us together can take out any other telepath.You know that.We've done it."He looked around at the whitewashed walls, blistered and peeling in the heat,searching for anything that might hint at what Enigma was hiding.Goddamn,that girl loved her puzzles.

"I don't think he's a telepath.I don't know what he was...is.His eyes glowed..."she ran a hand through her sweaty hair, disturbing her  ponytail,and he knew she was genuinely perturbed by her premonition.But he also knew this close to Enigma's secret,they could not pack it in.And Logan-that sorry son of a bitch-while tops on a physical battlefield,he was a lamb to the slaughter on a psychic battlefield.

"So what?Just another mutant.I'll take Glowboy if he shows up before we leave.Now why don't you use what you brought, huh?"

She frowned again,the ghost of lines appearing in her otherwise youthful,pale face."How?"

"Just sprinkle it around.Don't use it all,we might need some later."

She wore a black nylon fanny pack on her left hip,and she unzipped it and pulled out a souvenir she took with her from the Big Empty,hours before it became nothing more than yet another smoking hole in the ground:a vial of Logan's blood.

It looked just like a securely stoppered test tube full of the same red stuff that leaked out of most people,but Logan's blood was one of the most curious substances on Earth,and the science tech boys became orgasmic when they could study it.They had learned something inadvertently,although he imagined the Org tech boys already knew it-Logan's blood didn't go bad.

After a while blood,like any other biological substance,went off,which is why it had to be refrigerated.But not Logan's;it somehow sustained itself and kept itself viable,even in one hundred and ten degree desert heat,even after a week of laying in a suitcase in the back of  truck.It could probably be transfused into someone safely,although the amount was so piddling why bother?Still,the idea of those virtually immortal white and red corpuscles,t cells from an immune system that really was that (immune-to everything),to those oddities of self-repair that no scientist had yet to put an official name to...they were tempting,especially for a man like him:feeling the ravages of time like the wind of a pendulum swinging faster and faster, coming lower and lower,cutting him with infinite slowness into a thousand tiny pieces.

But Logan's blood alone wouldn't do anything for him,not permanently.He'd need a bone marrow transplant or some such thing to benefit from Logan's amazing cells,and even then there was no guarantee they would make a home in him for any length of time,or that he receive all the benefits from them:there'd be no guarantee he could get the shit beat out of him and still walk away,like Logan the Human punching bag.And frankly that was one aspect he wouldn't be gung ho to try,either.

Lu pulled the stopper from the test tube and sprinkled the blood  around the room like a priest consecrating a crime scene with holy water,flecks of it running down the heat damaged walls,droplets pooling on the sand covered floor.She then put the stopper back on,and slipped the remainder of his precious,strange blood back into her hip pack.

And then they waited.And waited.

As soon as the smell of baking blood filled the stuffy little shack,she turned to him,nose wrinkled in disgust."What's plan B?"

"I'm not really sure,"he admitted,scratching his head as sweat trickled down from his scalp.He assumed the trigger was Logan's DNA since she buried the info in his head,but if it there was something more-a psychic trigger,for instance-they were probably screwed.Unless,of course,he did show up,like Lu said he would.

She huffed a disgusted snort through her nose."Great.All this risking sunstroke for nothing,"she snapped,clearly disappointed,and then the floor of the shack seemed to vibrate.

His first thought was an earthquake,but it was far too mild,and seemed to be only shifting the sand in the hut.Lu backed up towards him as the sand seemed to spiral down a hidden drain,and a section of the floor seemed to retract in on itself, revealing a small,circular hatch by the back wall.A hatch that led straight down into darkness.

"What were you saying about nothing?"He drawled,moving past her to look down the open hatch,barely big enough for one person,and could just make out the metal rungs of a ladder leading down the interior wall.

'Sorry,Enigma,but you're about to be figured out',he thought triumphantly,lowering himself down the side,and starting his downward descent into cool darkness.

Colonel Gene Harris shook his head,not even wanting to hazard a guess."We're going to find that out,aren't we?"

Ever since the debacle in Canada,where they failed to recapture Wolverine and lost seven soldiers and half a dozen vehicles in the process,the hunt had been on for Omen,assuming she had betrayed them.Luckily-and very much unknown to her-she had received a microscopic tracer in what was supposed to be a chemical warfare vaccination about two and a half weeks before the Big Empty tragedy.Luckily the thing seemed to be working,and,for reasons unknown,they had traced her location with ground units and low earth orbit satellites to Death Valley.She was moving around,so she was most likely not dead.

Well,not yet.

Harris sat back in his crash seat,and shouted through the open door to the cockpit of the jet,"E.t.a?"

"Eight minutes,"the pilot,Krutzfeld,shouted back,barely audible over the constant thrum of the engines,which seemed to vibrate the fillings in his teeth.

The troops in the plane were geared up and ready,looking almost narcotized in their state of waiting.Of course,she was a telepath,and you couldn't fight them with humans alone.

"Of course I'm ready,"the telepath,who called himself Prometheus snapped irritably,giving him a glance that could boil water before looking away in disgust.

Older than most telepaths he had encountered (unhappily) in his tour of duty,Prometheus (actually Donald Marston) looked like a perpetually pissed Uncle,with a hard bitten face as sharp as a diamond,in spite of the wrinkles creasing his brow and his pale,nearly colorless blue eyes.His slicked back hair was steel grey,and he seemed to radiate with the pent up angst of a man seated next to his ex-wife at the family reunion.He'd have preferred to take along any telepath but this one,but beggars couldn't be choosers.

Harris closed his eyes,gripping his rifle tight as he mentally counted down the seconds.It would be nice to get the fuck out of this plane and away from Prometheus.It would also be nice to do some old fashioned mutie hunting once more,without worrying about Wolverine and his grenade packing friends showing up to spoil the party.

But they had prepared for that contingency,just in case.You could never trust a mutant.

"You're riding on the tail of a son of a bitch,"Bob sang happily to nothing,as if this was all some great lark.And maybe to him it was."High in the saddle make my backbone itch,and I'll buck you off my trailer hitch.And I'm here to break your fall."

"Do you ever shut up?"Logan asked,scowling in annoyance,and Helga laughed,knowingly and musically.

Bob smiled though,and gave Logan a sidelong glance."Nah,not really.Do I hon?"

"Only when I gag you,"she replied,with a wry smile.

Marcus chuckled,shaking his head as he looked out the window,pushing his goggles up on top of his head."You guys are fucking nuts."

"I haven't even mentioned the manacles yet,"Helga drawled.

"Now honey,that's just for special occasions,"Bob replied,giving her an appreciative glance in the rearview mirror.

Logan shook his head with a disgusted snort,and Angel wondered if he had missed something.Logan seemed a lot more impatient with Bob than he had been when he'd gotten in the car.But they hadn't had much in the way of conversation...had they?

Oh shit-it was Bob.They could have had a full blown argument complete with fisticuffs,and Bob could have erased their memories of it or simply had them never notice it.But that was why they wanted Bob in the first place,right?He may have billed himself as  the 'king of all bullshitters',but in truth he was the king of all mind games.Usually more for fun than profit.

But Angel knew the potentialities of this turning bad were very high:he had a feeling Logan and Bob were an explosive mix of personalities.They were polar opposites-Logan seemed to get along with no one,and Bob,at least on the surface,seemed to get along with everyone.But he knew that was a facade on Bob's part,and he had a feeling Logan sensed that deception immediately,hence the fact that they were possibly fire and gasoline.Yet he had a feeling in a battle royale between this  Organization and Maximum Bob,the Organization never even had a prayer.They could prepare for Logan,for Naomi,and maybe now even him,but was there any preparation possible for the likes of Bob?He seriously hoped he hadn't made one of the bigger mistakes of his life.

"Bugger me,look at that,"Bob exclaimed,as he slewed the car dangerously fast around a large rock formation,and almost crashed head on into a maroon Road Ranger parked behind it at a slight angle,possibly to face whatever shade there had been when it was parked.

Somehow,Bob turned the GTO at a sharp angle,and managed to bring it to a stop before it but somehow avoided slamming into it,even as the tires skidded dangerously towards it on the sand.

"I thought you knew how to drive,"Logan groused at him.

That made Bob laugh."Hey,nobody's a better desert driver than me.I could spend days doing donuts in the Outback."

"Actually,it was three hours last time,and eventually you turned the car over,"Helga said,her tail snaking over Marcus to yank open the car door handle.He seemed a bit surprised by that.

"Well,where the hell did that dingo come from?And that rock?It wasn't my fault.Besides,who had their tail in my lap,hmm? You can really break a guy's concentration,love-even at one hundred and sixty miles an hour."

"I really don't want to hear this,"Angel admitted,getting out of the car before Bob had killed the engine.

"Are you guys saying you were in a rollover at a hundred and sixty miles an hour?"Marcus asked,sounding dubious.

"Afraid so.Wrecked a real good four by four too."Bob said ruefully.

"And you're saying you weren't hurt?"

"We had our safety harnesses on."

"If you're racing with Bob,you need them,"Helga said,and it sounded like she was speaking from experience.

"You're all full of shit,"Logan snapped bitterly,getting out and slamming the car door.

"Ooh,somebody needs a good fuck pretty badly,"Helga purred,laughing under her breath.She seemed pretty serious,though.

Logan ignored her,stalking towards the Road Ranger,and Angel followed close behind.

"She's here,"Logan said."I can smell her."

Angel thought he could smell the humans-including at least one who had smoked-had driven the truck,but that was about all.Logan either had a better sense of smell,or simply knew Omen's scent well enough to find it in spite of cigarettes or time.

"Which direction,Wombat?"Bob asked,locking up his car.

Marcus laughed,and Angel covered his mouth and pretended to cough so Logan didn't catch him laughing.

"Wolverine,asshole,"Logan snarled back at the grinning Bob (of course Bob had done it on purpose)."I know funnier dead guys,Bob.Keep it up and you'll meet them."

"Whoa,"Helga said."Cool your jets,Hulk."

"I've actually met several funny dead guys,"Bob said,not only unfazed by the threat but smiling broadly."Maybe you should introduce Angel to 'em:he needs to loosen up."

"Hey,"Angel said defensively,but everyone seemed to ignore him,and Helga just laughed again.

"Everybody shut up,"Logan snapped,cocking his head at an odd angle.Since he was obviously listening for something, everybody obliged without snarky comments,and Angel strained to listen too.For a moment,he just heard the remarkably cool breeze kicking up and disturbing the sand,pelting grit against the rocks...what the hell was that?

Logan's brow furrowed as he tried to discern the type of noise and its direction,and from the look on Bob's face-serious,all humor gone-he heard it too.Helga and Marcus looked at the three of them,puzzled.Stansin's hearing wasn't above human norm,and maybe Marcus's wasn't either;Angel didn't know him well enough to be sure.

The noise was something like some shushing along in the sand-a lot of somethings.It could have been nothing more than an abnormally large grouping of sidewinders or other desert snakes on the move,but Angel seriously doubted that.

The noise of Logan popping his claws seemed almost explosively loud in the silence,and as he used his claws to climb up the roughly kidney shaped chunk of sandblasted red rock,Marcus came over,presumably to join him.But he paused and whispered to Angel,his dilated dark eyes wide,"Even in all this heat,Angel,you register as the coldest thing here."

"His type are really cold blooded,"Helga offered,whispering so low her voice was barely audible.

Marcus climbed up after Logan,although he took longer since he had to search for hand and foot holds in the craggy rock,and Angel decided to follow.

Bob and Helga stayed together at the base of the rock,watching them,but Bob leaned over and whispered something to Helga,who simply nodded.Angel couldn't hear what he said,but knowing Bob,it was probably for the best.

Once Angel had joined Logan and Marcus peering over the top of the rock,it took a moment for his eyes to adjust.It was dark enough that a few stars were coming out now,like flakes of diamond on indigo velvet,and they were so far from any city there was absolutely no ambient light whatsoever;even the moon,in it's 'new' phase,was unavailable to help.At first,Angel thought the ground itself was moving,but then he realized it was people dressed head to toe in black,moving quietly through the dark:commandos.

And they seemed to be filtering into a tiny shack,maybe a hundred yards away from them.

"Unless they're actually clowns,there's no way in hell more than two guys could fit in there,"Marcus commented quietly,as the sixth soldier Angel saw entered the hut.

"It's probably an opening to something,"Angel offered,as two heavily armed,body armored soldiers took up positions beyond the shed,clearly guarding it.

"They're sweltering in those suits,"Marcus said.It was not an opinion-he surely knew it beyond a shadow of a doubt.

"Hey,what the fuck is he doing?"Logan suddenly snapped,and it took Angel a moment to see what he meant.

Bob was walking out across the sand,deceptively casual,heading for the soldiers.

***

"Freeze motherfucker,"the closest soldier barked,raising his assault rifle until it was level with his face.

"You freeze,"Bob replied,and he did,becoming as instantly motionless and rigid as a statue.

His partner about twenty five feet beyond him raised his rifle too,but Bob didn't even give him time to issue a pointless order."Goodnight,"he said dismissively,and the soldier crumpled to the sand,asleep before he hit the ground.

The funny thing was soldiers were always easiest to push:they were broken down and conditioned to take orders,after all.Not a lot of will to butt up against.

Bob turned his attention back to the frozen soldier,and told him,"Get rid of that."

Dutifully,the soldier shrugged the strap of the rifle off his shoulder and tossed it aside.He thought about telling him to take off the helmet,but Bob decided it was probably best he didn't see how young this sorry son of a bitch was."Now,why are you here,son?"

"To capture or kill a rogue telepath,code name Omen."

The woman Logan had mentioned.Curious.Yes,they were on the right track,but what had brought Logan here?A hunch. Logan had no psychic abilities whatsoever,beyond a primal sense of intuition that probably only aided his 'fight or flight' response (although,in Logan's case,it was a 'fight or fight again' response),so why had his hunch been so dead on?It was the rider in his head,wasn't it?Could it be this Omen?

"How has she gone rogue?"If she was Logan's rider,it could have been a call for help-but why call for help?Because the rider in Logan's head was not mutant:it was demonic.

"She missed a check in,and was absent at a rendezvous to bring in Wolverine that turned into an ambush."

Ah.Either it was miscommunication,or Omen had decided she didn't need them anymore,and thought she could simply get away.It didn't work for Logan-why did she think it would work for her?

Oh,he loved telepaths with God complexes.They were so fun to take down.

"You brought in another mutant to rein in Omen,didn't you?"Bob asked the boy,seeing only the echo of his own reflection in his black helmet's faceplate.They had to be absolutely baking in those things.

The boy nodded."Prometheus.I think we should kill him."

"Why?"

"He's a prick."

"Fair enough."Bob could hear shuffling in the sand behind him,and knew the others were venturing out to join him.He hoped Angel had briefed them on the fact that he could take these guys without a problem,but that didn't mean Logan would ever believe it,of course.But considering how much he'd be screwed over,Bob couldn't blame him for a little cynicism. "How many in your unit,mate?"

"Twenty five,counting the mutie."

"What mutie?"Logan demanded,his voice traveling far over the sands.Yep,he had pretty acute hearing all right.

"Prometheus,"Bob said,as the soldier was unlikely to have even heard him.His world,for the moment,began and ended at Bob's eyes."Brought in to help hold down Omen,it seems.They seem to think she's gone rogue."

Logan snorted derisively."Is that what he says?"

"He can't lie,"Angel told Logan."Bob's..."

"Bob,"Helga offered.

Logan made a noise that suggested that was a less than satisfying explanation,but it was just going to have to do for now.

"What's in the shed?"Bob asked the boy.

"I'm not sure.An opening of some sort,a passageway.Omen is down there."

"And the rest of the unit?"

"Yes."

"Good boy.You're going to go to sleep and never remember any of this.Night."Bob told him,and the boy didn't collapsed more than he sort of listed to the side and toppled over,ending up face down in the warm sand.

"Okay,now that's creepy too,"Marcus said,although this time he didn't sound amused.

Helga's tail flicked down at the edge of his vision,and he saw her pick up the boy's discarded firearm.Transferring it to her hands,she shook the sand out of it,and said,"I didn't know American soldiers sported Kalishnikovs."

"These guys aren't standard issue,"Logan grumbled,and Bob could feel the anger radiating from him like heat from the sand. Bob couldn't blame him,but these were grunts,just following orders:the people really responsible for mutilating him were probably far,far away,lounging on some beach somewhere,comforting themselves with the knowledge that if the blood never actually touched their hands it's not their fault.And Logan probably knew that;his rage was simply bigger than he was.

"And I think this is international,not just American,"Marcus added grimly.

"Well,maybe I can find the head cheese and ask,"Bob said."Come on,Logan.Helga,take point."

"Hey,who made you the leader?"Logan snapped.

"I did.I can take out the entire unit without shedding blood,and that includes the telepaths.Can you say the same thing?" Bob asked Logan,not wanting to be cruel,but hell,it was the truth.