Six Years Later
V
ictor awoke cold and choking, strapped to a chair. A middle aged man was standing over him. “Charles, this one is awake.”
The man reached out and started undoing the straps holding him down. “You are very lucky to be alive,” he told Victor.
“Jimmy,” Victor gasped, looking about wildly for his little brother. “Where is Jimmy?” He swayed off the chair to his feet, only to go crashing to the ground. His knee connected with the floor with a sickening crunch. “Where is my brother?” he yelled, rage and pain lacing his voice as he clutches the floor while waiting for it to stop spinning as his knee knits back together.
“There are two boys here named James. What is your brother’s last name?” the man inquired.
Victor snorted. “Jimmy hasn’t been a boy for a long time, mister,” he explained. “Stryker was taking him away to perform a procedure on him; he promised it would make Jimmy better. Jimmy has started to go a little crazy.” Reality reasserted itself, and Victor was able to slowly get to his feet. The floor tilted a little under him, but it didn’t try to heave him off again.
Victor caught the way the man stiffens at the mention of Stryker. “He was… is one of Stryker’s experiments?” The man nodded grimly. “I think you and Charles definitely need to have a talk then.”
“And what is it I need to talk about, Erik?” Another man, Charles, walked over. Victor felt a mild sense of distrust.
“Stryker and his little experiments,” Erik explained, disgust dripping off the last word. “It seems that this gentleman’s brother was one such unfortunate soul.”
Victor’s eyes narrowed. “Where is my brother? And where the hell is Stryker?”
William Stryker grit his teeth in frustration after receiving word via North that the Three Mile Island facility had apparently been compromised. It would take a little bit of maneuvering, but it wasn’t a big deal to separate himself from that facility.
He had much more important things to worry about. After the loss of Weapon X six years ago, Stryker lost not only funding but the confidence of his government. They nearly scrapped his project all together.
But with the well timed help of an up and coming young politician by the name of Kelly, Stryker was able to convince those in power to keep funding his project to be prepared for the coming Mutant Menace.
Still, losing Weapon X had been a big blow to Stryker’s plans. And in six years, he had been completely unable to locate the man once known as James Logan.
It was as if James had completely disappeared off the face of the earth.
Then, last week, Stryker received proof that not only was Weapon X alive and well, but a clue as to where he was located.
Stryker was never one to leave something to chance. Evidence did not just drop out of the sky into one’s lap. It either had a price, or it was a complete fabrication.
And there, sitting in the heart of Moscow, was in fact the real Weapon X.
At least, on film he was. Stryker held in his hands multiple photographs of James with a man that he had been trying to pin down for years, Romulus, drinking beer and smoking a cigar.
That set Stryker’s teeth on edge to no end.
He had been hearing reports that Romulus had a male… partner who was his right hand in all matters, a man named James.
To think that Stryker had never even thought to make the connection that Romulus’s James was the same man who was Stryker’s James. All of these years spent searching Canada, and James had been in Russia the whole time.
With the help of North and Wilson, Stryker would get Weapon X back.
One way or another.
It had been two weeks since his “rescue” from the Island and Victor was frustrated.
He went with Xavier and Lehnsherr after learning from Xavier just what kind of a man Stryker really was in much greater detail. And, more importantly, after learning this Xavier was a telepath. A telepath who promised to help him find his brother, in return for helping to protect the young students at his special school.
Standing on the deck, looking out at the rising sun on a frosty morning, Victor found himself wondering where Jimmy was.
Or if Jimmy was even still alive.
For, as Xavier had explained, there was also a very real possibility that Jimmy may not have survived the procedure. It wasn’t as if Stryker has left any real information for them to find Jimmy with.
Just when Victor was ready to tell Xavier where exactly he could shove his stupid school, Xavier produced results: Jimmy was in Russia.
That was where the good news ended.
Based on what Lehnsherr and Xavier had been able to salvage from Three Mile before the authorities would have caught them, Stryker had tried to completely eliminate Jimmy’s memory and turn him into something called “Weapon X”. Then Jimmy disappeared for six years.
A contact that Erik had in the government had let them know Stryker had recently learned that Jimmy was in Russia with a man who called himself Romulus, who was apparently some kind of terrorist world domination type.
Victor planned to eviscerate him slowly.
Again, Xavier admonished him to wait.
So, for now, Victor would play along and help train these pups into warriors. Because he was going to need some serious help to get his little brother back.
And the world would run red with blood if need be.
