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ALKALI LAKE RESEARCH FACILITY
RESTRICTED AREA
TOP SECRET
KEEP OUT
Intruders will be prosecuted a smaller line of print ominously promised. Time and weather had faded the sign's fiery red lettering into an innocuous pink and the tin plaque itself now hung by a single corner from the chain link fence. Caught by the chill spring breeze of late afternoon, the warning sign clacked helplessly against the metal links like a struggling fish dangling from a hook.
Logan put the thing out of its misery with a snikt of claw and the sign flopped face down in the dirt. He ground the heel of his boot in Alkali Lake's 'welcome mat,' burying it deeper in the damp earth, and confronted the gates.
Professor Xavier had suggested that the military complex at Alkali Lake might hold information about Logan's past, a blank save for the last fifteen nightmare-haunted years. Information about who he was, why he had claws, a metal skeleton, a numbered tag saying Wolverine -- and why Logan himself had only the one name. Maybe it would be best not to know, a little voice said. He'd been hearing that little voice all the way up to Canada. But now that he was finally here . . . Ah, what the hell!
A single sweep of claws cut through the steel bar welding the gates shut against the idle, the curious, and the 'soon-to-be prosecuted' intruders like himself. That was the easy part. For although the high-tech security barrier proved to be no challenge, nature was another matter.
Seasons of dead leaves had thickly woven themselves into the gate's lower links and new grass sprouted from the dirt burying its bottom frame. But at his repeated shoves and kicks the gate grudgingly dug a furrow in the earth, allowing barely enough passage for himself and the motorbike before it stubbornly refused to yield any farther. He maneuvered the bike through, scraping some paint off one fender in the process, and stopped just inside the enclosure, his senses quivering.
The birds had already shut down their song for the day and the heavy silence was underscored by the shurr of wind in the nearby pines and the faint slap, slap of wavelets on the thawing lake.
As for the complex itself, save for the lazy curl of razor wire draped over the perimeter fence, glittering as bright and deadly in today's cold spring sun as when it was first uncoiled years ago, the signs of abandonment were everywhere. A half dozen low structures that had the look of temporary buildings clustered around three larger edifices of four floors each. All gave silent testimony of neglect. A few windows broken by past storms, the rest of the panes opaque with years of dirt, roofing shingles littering the ground, formerly white walls bleeding rusty streaks, foundations crumbling from repeated freeze and thaw, skeletons of last summer's weeds thrusting through patches of melting snow . . . The only evidence of life was a small tree growing through a crack in the sidewalk.
His nose registered dust, decay, mildew, and--was it his imagination? Although, Logan mistrusted imagination, his own above all. Was there, or was there not, underlying the dry, itchy smell of dirt the even drier, acrid scent of hot metal?
Impossible! He pushed the notion from his mind even as the back of his neck prickled and the muscles between his shoulder blades jerked tight. Nothing so far said this was the place that had given birth to his alternate, berserker self, the clawed, adamantium-enhanced Wolverine.
But it was the place. He could feel it in his bones. What bones were still left him, he amended. And his brows drew down even as the corner of his mouth lifted. He wheeled the bike farther into the compound toward the nearest of the larger buildings, reluctant to ride it as if the raucous noise of its motor might waken something better left sleeping. He was getting spooked.
Scowling, he propped the machine against the far side of the building that was his goal, making sure the bike could not be sighted from the main gate. Though what good concealing the motorcycle would do he was hard put to justify. The gate itself was still open and the freshly gouged earth bore not only his footprints but the tire tracks as well.
He knew his caution was rooted in fear and that made him angry, angry at himself. His claws punched through the lock on the side door, the sound of his assault still reverberating through the empty building when he entered. Half an hour later he came out grimmer, grumpier, angrier, but no wiser.
There was a lower level to the building and he had discovered a tunnel leading out of it, but since he had not thought to bring a flashlight on the trip he decided to leave the underground area for last. He could find his way about down there without light well enough, but any documentation he might want to read would have to be hauled up. Possibly he would find what he was looking for in one of the offices and have no need to explore the subterranean regions.
Leaving the bike where it was he went on to the next building. The second edifice yielded no more information than the first--the same discarded metal desks, empty file cabinets, scraps of paper that fluttered in the breeze of his passage. One find tantalized him--a forgotten desk calendar opened to a date three weeks after he had awakened to find himself naked in the snow some fifteen years ago.
Logan had never been sure how to react to that. Had Wolverine be a failure? An experiment that didn't measure up and so was discarded, abandoned in the wilderness to die? If so, why not just kill him? The unknown had shown no compunction about torturing his body, why draw the line at murder?
Or had he managed to escape? Was that what caused the installation to fold? Fear that he might be alive and inform the authorities? Ironic if true, for he remembered nothing. He crumpled the calendar page in his fist.
Riffling through the following days and weeks only revealed blank paper so he flipped back through the calendar to the preceding three, four months. Nothing he saw there could he interpret as concerning him. The person who inhabited this office had plenty of meetings indicated by initials and times. A name, Cornilius, was scattered frequently throughout. Curious, that. Normal meeting times scrawled by the name: 9:30 a.m., 2:00 p.m., 3:45 p.m., but also odd times: 5 a.m., 10 p.m., 1:30 a.m. Evidence of experiments that didn't hold to a common time schedule?
With a growl he knocked the calendar to the floor and strode out of that building toward next and last of the three, the one closest to the lake. If this one held no more answers than the first two--and there was no reason to think otherwise--then what? Back to the school? It was a haven, sure, but he had no real business being there. He was no doctor or teacher. His sole talent, if it could be called that, was fighting. His intimate fifteen year acquaintance with Wolverine had revealed no hidden depths of wisdom, philosophy, scholarship, or even morals. He smoked, he drank, he fought, he womanized, and he moved on down the road to do it all over again. How could this unknown past he searched for prove any different?
Lip curled in a snarl, he stomped up the steps of the last building and slashed through the lock, slamming the metal security door open so hard it hit the wall. The clangor echoing throughout the structure satisfied a little his sudden need for violence. Something physical to strike at rather than the emptiness of his days, the phantoms of his nights.
Yeah, he'd been used and abused, royally screwed. But the odds of finding out who had done it after all these years were about the same as his winning the Nobel Peace Prize. He had half an hour of daylight, maybe less, before nightfall, so just give this place a quick once-over to say he'd done it, then get the hell out. Stay at that little motel he'd passed twenty miles down the road. Then set out for the school 'cause he'd promised the kid. And Jean? asked the little voice. Jean . . . She appeared in his mind's eye: cool, smart, refined. What could she see in a Canucklehead like him--hot tempered, ignorant and crude? No, say goodbye. This time for real. Then-- Then the road again.
He was midway down the corridor gloomily resigning himself to a bleak future that matched his equally bleak present when he belatedly realized something was different about this building. The air here--slightly warmer? Fresher? A faint hum on the periphery of his hearing, more vibration than sound-- Alerted, he shot out his claws and stopped in his tracks, slowly turning his head, questing. A faint whiff of hot metal--there, down the hall. And this time it was not his imagination! But it was already too late. Even as he took a step towards the source of that sharp, burning odor his joints locked.
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