Books > Wolverine: Weapon X > Excerpts

Chapter One: Prophecy

Rain. Gouging thin canals through soiled windowpanes. Night. Bending from black to phosphorescent green. A sickening hue, like alien pus.

Liquid all around me. But not drowning.

Neon hummed beyond the glass. Twisted tubes. Huge letters spelling out a single word etched in blue-white light: prophecy.

The word seemed apocalyptic. No. That isn't right. It was part of the apocalypse. Some drunken bum down the hall had clued him in.

"The apocalypse is coming" -- that's what the geezer said. "When all the secrets will be exposed."

No more secrets, no more running.

"Hell is comin'..."

That's what he said. He spit when he said it, too. Then the old guy just stopped breathing.

Air. No air here. But breathing still.

It happened a lot at the Prophecy. Old guys. And not so old. Keeling over. Dropping dead.

Trapped inside. Like floating in a coffin. But not dead. Not yet...

The water from the sky was as old as the earth. Logan watched it fall. The same water. Billions of years. Over and over. Fish crawled out of it. Man crawled out of it, too.

Then I crawled out.

Trapped inside. Liquid all aroud. A vile chemical. But not water...

Dinosaurs fed on plants, drank from lakes. This rain was part of those lakes. The wells of villages. Warriors, barbarians, samurai. The water they drank went up and came down. The same water. Trapped in a cycle.

Everything, even the earth, has its limits.

A shock of lightning scratched the night. Logan's eyes shined through the glass -- feral-sharp, scanning streets lit by shards of bone-white brilliance.

Another strike, a tree split. The energy sundered it. Like a warning of things to come.

"Storm's comin', and it's a big one. The big one. The one I've been looking out for."

The road. He remembered the road. The cold steered the wheel. Black woods at night. The far north. Endless wilderness. Soon he'd be back. Soon he'd be home.

Beyond the glass now: wet concrete, rusty Dumpsters, graffiti-scarred alleys, haunting tenements, emptiness. They haven't found me. Not yet.

Logan turned from the window, crossed the stained brown carpet. The room was as small as a cage, empty bottles like stalagmites spiking the floor, spiking his brain.

A week-old newspaper ripped under his booted foot, meaningless events. Day after day. He collapsed on a couch, spring-cushioned by a tabloid spread over it. His massive fist tightened, crumpling the newsprint, hurling the ink-black words at the blank TV.

Useless headlines. Day after day after day.

Nearby, a Seagram's bottle, shimmering with many promises. Half-empty. No. Half-full. He poured a healthy swallow into a glass, always grateful.

Ripples of electricity scratched the night.

Searing bolts stab his brain.

Logan winced in shock, retching as a salty trickle rolled down his throat. Then the pain vanished, leaving only the coppery taste of blood -- a familiar tang. He touched his throbbing temple, but found no stain. Only beads of salty sweat moistened his fingertips.

He swallowed again, and the metallic sting was gone, too. Were his senses off? Or was the alcohol awakening demons of past mayhem, forgotten violence?

Forgotten...

"The apocalypse is here. Time to write home, to make peace with somebody -- "

Peace? With whom?

He remembered the saloon, a dozen milling bodies. The usual fog of burning tar. The air had felt frozen. But his muscles, beneath the flannel, had been warm enough. He'd lined up the bottles on the bar in front of him, green pickets. Glass pillars. His fortress.

Time to write home.

"Dear Ma -- ya goat-headed, misshapen, walleyed witch. Got some news for ya. The secret is out! Signed: yer son with the hairy paws."

As if he knew who his mother was. Everybody's got one, right? Or two, maybe. Secrets, that is. Logan had a doozy. A serious mother lode. Hard hiding it sometimes. But he got by.

Another shot of whisky straight from the bottle. But no oblivion. Not even a rush, until he noted its absence. Then the sensation arrived as if he'd conjured it. He sucked his cigar.

Gagging. Tissue rips. A ravaged throat.

Maybe the apocalypse has already begun.

This place where he was hiding, this Prophecy, it was a tenement transformed by the faithful into a refuge for fallen Christians. He'd been a Christian once, a long time ago. He still remembered enough of the lingo to lie his way through the door. It was a dump, of course. But it was free -- for the fallen. So he'd qualified.

Warm whisky dribbled past Logan's wiry, raven-black chin stubble, onto his sweat-stained T-shirt.

Choking. Then a voice. But who?

"Enough of the stuff to stun an elephant..."

Alcohol alters the flow of electrolyte ions through brain cells. He remembered reading that somewhere -- part of his black ops training, maybe. Whisky slows the speed at which neurons fire.

"But I'm not drunk. And I want to be...I need to be..."

Alcohol suppresses the production of a hormone that keeps the body's fluid reserves in balance. Without that hormone, kidneys begin to steal water from other organs...

"Steal water?"

The storm continued to rage, intensifying.

The rain continued to pound on the windows.

Liquid all around. But not drowning.

The brain shrinks as a result.

Logan snatched the bottle again and spilled the dregs into the bottom of his glass. But he paused before shooting it back. Cradling the drink in his heavy fist, Logan slumped into the battered couch.

Violent images flowed over him. A dispute he'd had with a nickel-and-dime crime boss. The idiotic bravado.

"Stupid. He should have known better..."

It happened after he'd become an outcast again. This time he'd been booted from a secret branch of the Canadian Intelligence Service. The infraction had been trivial compared to the heinous acts he'd performed in the line of duty. But Logan sensed his peers were happy to rid themselves of the enigma in their midst.

Secrets. I had plenty. More than any man should bear.

Not long after, Logan found work. His reputation became a two-edged sword. An unending line of young punks or fading old-timers always there to challenge him. But that meant jobs were easy to come by.

This time around, it had been Logan's "associates" who'd executed the double cross.

That day, Logan recalled, had gotten off to a bad start. He resented the trip to the gunrunner's garage to collect his cut of the profits. But when he saw the sneer on St. Exeter's face, Logan knew things were about to get much worse.

The gunrunner leaned against a crate of fragmentation grenades, his cashmere sweater, Prada pants, and Gucci loafers incongruous in the junkyard setting.

"I didn't think you'd have the guts to show up here, Logan. Not after your connection failed to deliver the goods."

St. Exeter pushed back his hair with a delicate, manicured hand.

Logan met the man's cool gaze. "You're spewing crap, René. I know for a fact that those air-to-airs are already in the pipeline to your 'clients' in Latin America."

"Perhaps. But the weapons were of...inferior quality."

"The Pentagon would be surprised to learn that, considering they were all state-of-the-art Stinger missiles."

As Logan spoke, two of St. Exeter's bodyguards entered the garage behind him. Two more, in greasy coveralls, climbed out of a repair pit to flank him.

Half smile in place, René stared at Logan with eyes like black empty holes.

"You're not gonna pay," said Logan. It was not a question.

Suddenly, the grease monkey on Logan's left pulled a wrench out of his stained coveralls.

Stupid.

Logan hit the man with enough force to drive his jawbone into his brain. A grunt, and the mechanic crumpled. Logan snatched the tool from his dead hand before the man struck the ground.

Dodging a bullet fired at point-blank range, Logan spun and hurled the wrench at the man who'd pulled the trigger.

A crunch of bone, a splash of red, and the shooter's head jerked back. As he fell, his Magnum dropped at Logan's feet.

Logan ducked a wild shot, then snapped up the weapon. He fired without aiming -- a lucky shot. The bullet clipped the second bodyguard's throat. Gurgling, he fell to his knees, clutching at his neck in a widening pool on the concrete floor.

Finally, Logan's luck ran out. The last of René's bodyguards charged, in an attempt to push Logan into the repair pit. The pair fell in together.

At the bottom of the deep concrete well, both scrambled to their feet. A shadow fell over them. Logan looked up in time to see St. Exeter toss an object into the hole.

"Catch, mon ami."

Logan snatched the grenade out of the air. When the bodyguard saw it, he lunged for the ladder.

"Where you goin'?" Logan grabbed the man by his collar, spun him around, and jammed the grenade into his gut.

Wheezing, the bodyguard folded around the explosive and Logan released it, then dove for the opposite end of the pit. Heat and gore washed over Logan as the muffled blast slammed him against the concrete wall.

Bleeding from a patchwork of wounds, Logan crawled out of the pit that had become the bodyguard's grave, only to discover that René St. Exeter had fled the scene.

Logan caught up with him a few days later, on a public street in the heart of Montreal. The final confrontation occurred amid a dozen gawking witnesses, but Logan didn't care.

Some things, like payback, were too damn important to delay.

Even after the rage had passed, Logan felt no regret -- only anger that he was forced to move on. Later that same night, he planned to hop a freight. His destination: the Yukon. As far north as Logan could go, to the very edge of civilization. He'd leave behind everything -- a Lotus-Seven, some worthless possesions, his past.

With a bit of luck, Logan could start over.

Start over?

"Good place to start over, eh?"

The voice -- familiar -- came from years past. Back when Logan was still with the Defense Ministry. Back when he operated out of the Ottawa branch of the CIS.

Logan had been hunched in a corner, honing his blade, when the stranger approached. He'd looked up long enough to see past the big man's proffered hand, to the name tag tacked onto his broad chest: N. Langram.

The screech of metal on tortured metal resumed as Logan sharpened the edge of his K-bar knife.

The sandy-haired man reluctantly withdrew his hand, then slumped down on a weight bench across from Logan's.

The training area was empty but for them. Minutes before, they'd been told that their training had ended, that their first assignment was at hand.

"I think it's a great place to begin again...the CIS, I mean," continued N. Langram. "I've been to a lot of places, done a lot of things, legal and illegal, and I'm happy to forget my past and bury it forever."

Langram slapped his knees. "To my surprise, after all my mischief, the Defense Ministry and the CIS decided to let bygones be bygones and offer me a second chance."

"Good for you," said Logan.

"I figure they've done the same for you, eh?"

Logan fingered the tip of the blade. A drop of blood dewed his fingertip. He tasted it.

"My name's Langram...friends call me Neil." This time, the man didn't offer his hand.

"Logan."

"Quiet one, eh?"

Logan spun the knife and plunged it into the scabbard. Then he crossed his arms and stared into the distance.

"I've been wondering why they paired us. You and me. We're strangers and we've never even trained together. So I'm trying to figure out the angles..."

"What have you deduced, Langram?"

Missing Logan's sarcasm, Langram tried to answer the question.

"Odd parameters for this mission, don't you think?" he began. "I mean, why not a simple HALO jump? The CDM has hundreds of soldiers who've trained for High Altitude Low Opening insertions, and hundreds more qualified for reconnaissance infiltration of hostile territory. Which means they don't need either of us. We'd be considered overqualified for this mission, except that the men in charge decided to do a few things the hard way."

"Like?"

"You have to admit that there aren't too many operatives in the CIS -- or even the CDM -- who are proficient in the use of the HAWK harness," said Langram.

The HAWK, or High Altitude Wing Kite, was a specialized piece of "personal aerodynamic hardware" developed for use by the Strategic Hazard Intervention Espionage Logistics Division -- and SHIELD didn't give lessons on how to use their high-tech flying suits to just any soldier.

"Maybe the top brass thinks the HAWK is the best means of insertion," said Logan. "With a HAWK we can control our own speed and angle of descent, and when and where we land. And we can fight back -- even while we're airborne -- if it becomes necessary."

Langram nodded, conceding Logan's points. "I know all that. I've used the HAWK before. And so, apparently, have you, Mr. Logan."

"Your point?"

"Maybe you and I crawled through the same mud," said Langram. "Or maybe we just have some of the same friends...and enemies."

Logan sat in silence.

"Secretive one, too, eh?"

Secrets. I've got plenty. Too many for me to handle sometimes.

"That's okay, Logan. I won't pry."

"You already have."

Langram refused to take offense, and they sat in uneasy silence for what seemed like a long time.

"I know the geography pretty well," Langram said at last. "The Korean Peninsula, I mean. And the area where we're going, too."

"Nice place?"

"If North Korea is a prison, then the region around Sook Reservoir is solitary confinement, a cell on death row, and the gallows all rolled up into one ugly bastard of a package."

Logan shrugged. "Sounds delightful."

Langram studied the other man. Logan avoided his gaze.

"So that's my expertise," Langram said. "And since you don't appear to be a nuclear weapons specialist, I figure you know either the local lingo or something about the guys we're chasing."

"Right so far."

"And since you are very skilled with a blade, and you ain't Korean, I have to assume you know plenty about Hideki Musaki and all his Yakuza thugs, and about the weapons-grade plutonium they hijacked on its way to that top secret government laboratory up north -- the one processing weapons of terror."

Logan nodded once. "I know Hideki Musaki...personally. But we're not tight."

Langram smiled for the first time since their meeting. "So you've wandered the Far East, eh? Somehow I knew it. Seeing you reminded me of a place...a dive called Cracklin' Rosa's. And a man, too. A fellow known in those parts as Patch. He had a proclivity for the blade...just like you."

Again, Logan did not reply.

Langram glanced at his watch, then stood.

"Got to go, Logan," he said. "But we'll be seeing each other a lot in the coming days. In the meantime, remember what I said about the CIS being a good place to start over. To ditch your past if you want to...not many get a second chance."

Langram turned to go.

"Hey, Langram."

This time, Logan was on his feet and facing him.

"I'll watch your back if you'll watch mine. And when this mission's over, if we're both still alive, I'll buy you a drink..."

Another drink. And another. But never enough to bring release. Wait. What was I thinking about?

Like wisps of mist, the memories of that first meeting with Neil Langram slipped away.

Reduced by a creeping amnesia to dazedly pondering the drink in his hand, Logan watched as the whisky morphed from clear brown to cloudy green.

Nauseated, he looked away.

On the other side of the window, the word prophecy glowed with ghastly phosphorescence. An acrid, chemical stench assailed his nostrils, and battered couch springs dug into his flesh. But despite his physical discomfort, Logan's head lolled and his eyes closed.

Sleep came, but Logan's dreams were no different than his waking life. He longed for escape while he continued to run, his legs pumping on a perpetual incline, stretching farther and farther into the future. At the top was the humming neon of the Prophecy sign, waiting there, waiting for him.

Suddenly awake, Logan bolted upright, crushing the glass in his grip. Thick red blood pooled in his palm, but he felt no pain.

Logan staggered to his feet, impatient now to flee, to escape before the apocalypse swallowed him up.

He tugged the flannel shirt over his wide shoulders. He pondered the predictability of his nightmares. Visions of pain and bones and spikes. Of vile stench and horror. And of dagger hands...

Searching for the keys to his car, Logan rummaged through a pile of yellowing newspapers. He noticed a headline on a grease-stained tabloid:

Mercy Killer "Quack" Eludes FBI.

Under the headline, next to the story, a grainy black-and-white image. The photograph of a portly, bearded man with a bland, unremarkable face.

The picture and the headline vaguely troubled Logan, but he didn't know why. When he tried to snatch the memory threads to connect them, they dissolved like streams of vapor in his increasingly clouded mind.

Lightning cracked the sky, split another tree.

Another warning.

Storm's comin', and it's a big one. The big one. The one I've been looking out for.

Logan pocketed his money and his keys. He left the Prophecy without a backward glance. His last memory: the neon sign blinking steadily in the rain.

Suddenly, Logan was sitting on a bar stool, hunched over a stained counter of a dingy gin mill. Outside, through filthy plate glass, the rain had stopped. A blanket of dirty snow covered the broken streets and sidewalks.

When did it snow?

Hands shaking, Logan reached for the bottle at his arm. He swallowed, wondering if all the booze had finally caught up with him and induced some kind of mental blackout.

Logan had no memory of the drive, yet through the big window he could see his Lotus-Seven parked in the lot.

Did he drive through rain, then snow? Had hours passed? Or days? Had he missed the freight train...and with it his only chance to escape?

For the first time in Logan's memory, panic welled up inside of him. Another swallow of whisky took care of it, but left confusion in its wake.

Logan regained a certain measure of control by observing his surroundings -- the bartender calmly washing glasses while watching a muted television tuned to a soccer game. Another man seated at the opposite end of the bar, drinking quietly. Logan sniffed the air, and his nose curled at the smell of rank booze and stale tobacco.

Tubes like worms. Boring their way into his ears, nose, his mouth, his brain.

Outside, a lone traffic signal switched from green to yellow to red and back again. There were no pedestrians on the sidewalks, and the clock on the snow-covered steeple down the block was running backward.

We travel into the future every second we live, but no one can go back in time, according to Einstein. Which proved the old geezer wasn't so smart after all.

In the shadows, under the dartboard, Logan spied three men with long coats and sunglasses, hats pulled down over their faces, drinks untouched in front of them. They sat at the edge of darkness. Waiting. Watching.

Time to go...

Logan rose, tossed a wad of bills on the bar, and headed for the door. The shadow men ignored him...or seemed to. Their inaction gave Logan hope, but not much.

Outside, his heavy boots crunched the icy snow.

Boots. Like a soldier's. Like mine. I was a soldier once. No, twice. I fought in two wars. Both of them a long time ago.

Logan looked down to find his boots gone, his feet no longer clad in hard leather, but swathed in soft moccasins. There was still snow. Everywhere. But this covering was pristine and virgin white. The reflective snow of his youth. It coated trees and blanketed rocks. It shimmered with frost under a pale winter sun.

The tavern, the parking lot, the shadow men had disappeared. Logan padded alone through a silent mountain forest.

Home? Could I be home already?

Hoarfrost crunched under the balls of his feet. The chill seeped bone-deep into Logan's wiry, teenaged frame. But despite the frigid air, the darkening sky, the deepening snow, Logan slogged ahead.

It was the burning rage that pushed him, maddened him -- an unreasoning need for vengeance that drove Logan farther and farther into the wilderness.

Through calf-deep snow, Logan followed the spoor, moving quickly in a painful effort to catch up to his elusive quarry. Numb fingers clutched his father's long knife, ready to strike, ready to stab, to rend.

Eager to kill.

At a rocky precipice cleared of snow by the relentless wind, the footprints Logan had tracked ended abruptly. Frustrated, Logan scanned the forest, then sniffed the air, hoping to locate his prey by scent alone.

Harsh winds stung Logan's face -- a face raw from the bitter cold and bruised from the beating he'd received at the hands of Victor Creed, the bully known to the local settlers of this region by his Blackfoot Indian name, Sabretooth.

I know Creed hates me. But I don't know why. More secrets, deeper and darker than the forest around me.

Sabretooth had turned up at the door of Logan's log cabin hours -- or was it days? -- before, just as he had every year around this same time. There was neither rhyme nor reason to Creed's visits -- only that they always occurred when Logan was alone.

Logan had walked beyond the boundaries of his father's homestead, inside the tree line where he gathered firewood for the cold days and nights ahead. He was alone again. His father had been gone for weeks, fur-trapping up north.

To guard his son, his meager possessions, and the precious furs he'd gathered during trapping season, the elder Logan had left behind his hunting knife and a fierce husky named Razor.

Returning with a heavy bundle of dry timber, Logan had heard Razor's frenzied barks and angry howls, muffled by distance, by snow and by trees. He'd tossed the firewood aside and hurried back to the cabin as fast as he could run.

He found Razor's blood and brains staining the snow, and the Blackfoot helping himself to the pelts Logan's father had left to dry under the winter sun.

Through tears of rage, Logan stared down at the murdered animal while Creed's taunts battered his ears. Then, with the savage cry of an enraged beast, Logan hurled himself at his tormentor, to land on the man's back. Logan clawed at Creed's face and tore at his throat with his teeth.

With a fierce growl of his own, Sabretooth dashed Logan to the frozen ground.

Stunned, he sprawled in the snow next to his dog's stiffening corpse. As he fought for consciousness, Logan saw the Indian loom over him. Heard the man's stinging laughter ringing in his ears. Felt the torrent of kicks and blows that rained down on him.

Finally, the blackness rose and swallowed him up.

Much later, Logan bolted upright, his body numb from the cold. The sun had crossed the sky, the day fading. Logan's memory returned, and with it a murderous rage.

Racing to the cabin, Logan snatched the hunting knife from its place over the mantle. Without regard for the elements or the waning daylight, Logan set off, determined to hunt down Sabretooth and end his enemy's existence once and for all.

Within the first hour, Logan lost Creed's trail, then picked it up again. Now the Blackfoot's spoor was mixed with another's. A bear's. A large one, by the size of the prints. Like Creed, the animal was moving up a crude mountain trail toward higher ground.

Minutes later, as Logan nearly crested a hill, a dark figure rose up from behind a boulder. The grizzly roared a challenge, and Logan reared back in surprise.

Lumbering forward on its short hind legs, the mammoth grizzly towered over him. The animal weighed at least four hundred pounds. When it roared again, hot spittle splashed Logan's cheek. The creature's steaming breath rolled over him.

For a moment, Logan felt paralyzed. Then he raised his knife and let loose with a howl of his own. Moving forward, the blade slashing back and forth, Logan prepared to face the creature's massive onslaught.

The bold, unexpected move startled the bear. The beast halted, eyes wide, ears twitching -- just out of the blade's reach.

Legs braced, Logan prepared to charge. His rage clawed his heart and he longed to slash and stab this creature -- any creature. Nothing could threaten him.

Time seemed suspended as man and beast eyeballed each other very cautiously and carefully.

Then, from somewhere behind the grizzly, Logan heard a snort, followed by a terrified bleat. In the back of the looming grizzly, Logan spied four black eyes peering at him from under a tangle of low, snow-laden pine branches.

Black fur rippling, brown snouts wet and steaming, the frightened cubs emerged from cover, only to cower behind their mother.

Seeing the helpless pups, Logan lowered his blade. With wary eyes locked on the angry grizzly, he took a single step back, then another.

The bear snorted, her fur bristling, as Logan continued his careful retreat. Even in his harsh world, Logan believed that not everything that was a threat should be destroyed.

"Go in peace. You are not my enemy and I am not yours," Logan whispered softly as he continued to walk backward, down the trail.

The bear sensed Logan's intent. She dropped on all fours, then turned her quivering back on the human.

Slapping the cubs with her front paws to move them along, the grizzly plunged between the snow-covered trees.

Logan watched the creature retreat, her hide dusted with snow, two cubs scurrying at her feet. When the bear had moved out of sight, Logan closed his eyes and leaned against a tree, heart racing from the aftershock of the unexpected encounter.

When he opened them again, Logan found himself outside the tavern, in the middle of the snow-covered parking lot.

The night had grown much colder -- unseasonably cold, unless Logan had lost weeks or months since his time at the Prophecy, instead of mere hours.

But he had no time to worry about that now. Not with the shadow men so close...

With a stab of relief, Logan spied his Lotus-Seven. The top was down -- absurd in this weather, even for someone who did not feel heat or cold like everyone else.

Logan found his keys and slid behind the wheel.

The throbbing roar of the engine reassured him. But before Logan could throw the vehicle into gear, figures emerged from the darkness. Then a man spoke.

"Mr. Logan?"

Logan looked up just as something hard, cold, and sharp struck his shoulder, stabbed through muscle and ribs, and pierced his lung.

A hot gorge closed his throat. Wheezing, Logan struggled to rise, as toxins surged through his body, sapping his strength, bringing his mind to a standstill.

Helpless as a dishrag, Logan was dragged from the car. He lashed out -- only to be pummeled to the cold ground by vicious, unseen fists. With the last of his waning strength, Logan fought back. But as the powerful tranquilizer took effect, the dark and the pain devoured him.

Just before consciousness slipped away, Logan felt an odd sense of relief. There was nothing more he could do now. Days of running and nights of hiding were over. Escape was no longer possible.

The apocalypse has begun.

Copyright © 2004 by Marvel Characters, Inc