“A satellite coming out of a cartoon kid’s ass and hailing aliens is entertainment?” Logan said, more or less to himself. “Boris, what the hell are we watching? Why are you making me watch this shit?”
Boris dropped the remote control from his mouth and grinned at Logan.
“Enjoy it, mutt, because as soon as this is over I’m changing the channel,” Logan threatened. “There’s no way I’m watching a whole hours of this shit.”
Sensing no malice behind the threat, Boris simply went back to watching the cartoon.
Rolling his eyes, Logan lowered his head back onto the pillow and flung his arms over his eyes. Something in the pit of his stomach was bothering him. He had no clue where it was coming from and that pissed Logan off. He wished that he had stayed in the lower levels with Marie., but knew that staying wouldn’t have been an option. Marie would have been too busy worrying about him to concentrate on what Erik was teaching her.
“You in there, Logan?”
At the sound of Victor’s voice seeping through the door both Logan and Boris perked up.
“Yeah, Vic, I’m in here,” Logan called, pushing himself into a seated position, much to Boris’s annoyance. The rottweiler glared at him then hopped off the bed and went to sit in front of the TV, the remote control still in his jaws.
The door opened, revealing the seven foot two gargantuan known as Victor Creed. Though they could only recall knowing each other for the past few hours, they shared a past that neither of them could remember clearly. Like him, Victor had been an unwilling resident of the Alkali Lake military compound. From Erik, Logan had learned that he had most likely escaped during the confusion created when Erik hand his crew had come for Victor. Logan’s presence, and the experiments being conducted on him, had been kept such a secret that Erik hadn’t known of his existence until they were making their way out with Victor. By then, Logan was already stumbling through the snow towards Marie’s home.
“Something’s wrong,” Victor declared folding his arms across his chest.
That caught Logan’s attention right away. “What do you mean? Has something happened to Marie?”
Victor shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know if anything happened to your woman, but I do know that Erik’s jet just took off about half an hour ago and now I can’t find him, Mystique or Toad.”
“What about Marie?” Logan demanded, jumping to his feet.
“I haven’t see her either. Seems that you and me are the only ones left,” Victor told him, sounding very surprised by that fact.
That confused the hell out of Logan. There were supposed to be a whole bunch of mutants in the place and Victor had only mentioned Toad and Mystique. Now that he thought about it, the only people besides Marie that he had seen were Erik, Victor and Mystique. There had been other women, but they had all smelled the same. Like Mystique. Logan was strongly beginning to doubt that Erik’s island compound was really a hideaway from persecuted mutants.
“I need to know where he took Marie,” Logan snarled, stalking out of the room. Boris and Victor were right on his heels. “If that bastard touched one hair on her head I’m going to rip his fucking guys out. No one touches my Marie.”
“The only place I can think of to look would be his office,” Victor suggested, catching up to Logan so that the two of them were walking side by side. “There were all sorts of papers around last time I was there. Looked like he was planning something.”
“Take me there,” Logan ordered.
The aching feeling in Logan’s stomach had grown now that he knew the source of it. Knowing that Marie was in danger because of a man that they had trusted threw Logan into a rage. The only thing that he could focus on was the fact that Erik had done something to Marie. Bad as the mutation had been, the fact that he had now left with Marie was even worse.
“Boris doesn’t like Erik,” Victor said suddenly as he led Logan towards the older mutant’s office. “We were in the garden playing and Erik came out. Boris went into a frenzy and didn’t stop till he left.”
Logan growled, the claws on his right hand popping out suddenly. “Damn it. I knew there was a reason I didn’t like that fucking prick! There was something about him that just didn’t sit right. Boris not liking him is a dead give away.”
By then, Logan was pretty much on autopilot. He could think of nothing clearly except for the fact that Marie was missing. She wasn’t there. For the first time since they had met, Marie wasn’t there. That scared him. Rather than showing his fear to another person, one that he barely knew, Logan settled for anger. Anger wouldn’t leave him vulnerable. The only person that he would allow to see him vulnerable like that was Marie.
“You’d better not be lying to me about this,” Logan said darkly as Victor led him through the vast labyrinth of corridors to Erik’s office.
“I wouldn’t lie to you, Logan. We’re brothers,” Victor told him, jerking his head slightly as he spoke.
Logan glanced at Victor out of the corner of his eye. “We don’t look like brothers.”
“We have the same past. The same enemies. That makes us brothers,” Victor explained, turning down a short staircase. “Brothers do not betray each other. Erik told me that.”
“Fuck Erik!” Logan snarled, his eyes blazing. “He may talk about us all being brothers, but he sure as hell doesn’t act like it. He took Marie.”
Unable to believe that Erik would do anything like that, Victor told Logan as much. As much as Logan wanted to scream and shout at Victor for being such a blind fool one simple fact kept him restrained. Marie was the first person Logan had seen. She had helped him and taken care of him. Erik had done the same thing for Victor. Had the roles been reversed, Logan would never have believed that Marie would have done something like that. Even though he didn’t like it, Logan could understand where Victor was coming from.
“Marie wouldn’t leave. Not of her own free will,” Logan insisted, trying to convince himself as much as he was Victor. “I know that Marie would never do something like that to me.”
It seemed to take forever for them to get to Erik’s office. Too long. The length of time that it took to get to Erik’s office gave Logan’s mind more time to wander. To think about Marie and what Erik could possibly be doing to her. Marie could be hurt, screaming for him to help her, but he wasn’t there.
He wasn’t there.
That thought nearly sent Logan over the edge. Coming to a complete stop in the centre of the hallway, Logan turned and slammed his fist into the concrete wall. His claws, which were still extended, slid through the thick wall as though it were made of butter. It wasn’t the same with his fist. An incredible pain shot up his arm, causing Logan to cry out. Uncaring of the pain, Logan pounded his other fist into the wall.
His screams bounced off the walls,, echoing loudly in his ears. Logan kept screaming Marie’s name, over and over again as though it were a prayer. Tears were streaming down his cheeks, but Logan ignored them. He ignored everything except for the fact that Marie wasn’t there. She wasn’t with him anymore.
The claws on his right hand still stuck in the wall, Logan sunk to his knees as he continued to beat his left fist against the wall. He screamed Marie’s name, uncaring of the tears that were sliding down his cheeks. Logan felt like he was in another nightmare. One that was much worse than any other he had ever had. And it wasn’t one that he could wake up from because Marie wasn’t there to make it end. She was in danger and he couldn’t help her. At least not yet.
With one final scream, Logan yanked his right hand free of the wall and staggered to his feet. Blood coated his hands, but he paid it no mind. With a quick growl in Victor’s direction to get the other man moving, Logan followed him towards Erik’s office. He had taken the edge off his anger, but Victor and Boris seemed to sense he wasn’t someone to cross.
“We’re here,” Victor announced, slashing through the lock on the door with his own, more natural, claws.
Logan pushed his way past the taller man into the room. The amount of metal in the room unnerved him, but he charged in nonetheless. He needed to find out where Marie was and his best chance of finding that out where Erik had taken her was in that room. So Logan went straight to the desk and began riffling through the papers that littered its metallic surface.
Logan scanned the papers, searching for some clue as to where Marie was. Most of what was typed on them made no sense. A great deal of it looked like gibberish and made his head hurt. The more he tried to read it, the more his head hurt and the more frustrated Logan became. He wanted a nice, easy answer as to what was going on, but he couldn’t find out.
“This doesn’t look good,” Victor mumbled from across the room where his face was buried in a file cabinet.
Logan bounded over the desk and rushed to the other man’s side, taking the three file folders that he was holding out.
Written on the front of the first folder was “Sabertooth” in black, stenciled lettering. Inside were pictures and papers about Victor. From the brief amount that he read, he could tell that it was about what had been done to Victor at the Alkali Lake compound. Tossing it onto the desk, Logan went to the second file.
“The Wolverine: Weapon X.” As soon as he opened it, a chain with a dogtag on it fell to the floor. Reaching down, Logan picked it up, examining the engraving. Wolverine. Logan’s own closed-eyed face stared back at him from a black and white picture.
“Looks like we both have tags,” Victor announced, holding up his own chain which he then slipped around his neck. “They keep their dogs on a tight leash.”
Logan grunted in response and went to the third file. “The Rogue.”