About an hour and a half later the helicopter touched down on the back lawn of the Institute, sending kids scattering in all directions. As the rotors powered down the mercenary team began to disembark onto the now abandoned grounds. Logan lifted Marie out of the cabin, setting her lightly on her feet as he gestured one of the other men over.
"Marie, you stick close to me, or to this guy, okay, if anything happens and you need out of the way he can do that," Logan instructed. The guy nodded, understanding his instruction to be her shadow.
"No offence, but who is this guy?" Marie asked skeptically.
Logan looked confused for a moment, "I don’t remember but he can teleport," he replied with a shrug.
"I'm John," the man replied, offering her a hand "And I can teleport, so I'll be your exit strategy when this all goes tits up, knowing these two, that's exactly how this is going to go."
"That's comforting," Marie replied sarcastically, as she fell into step beside Logan. Taking all the opportunity she could at reassuring physical contact, she slipped her hand into his as they walked.
As the entered Marie spied Jubilee among a crowd of scared looking teenagers, she stepped out cautiously and called out. "Rogue, seriously chica, what shit have you got yourself in?"
"You would not believe me even if I told you but I promise I will, later," Marie replied, leaving her standing in the hall, more perplexed than before as she watched the half dozen armed men follow Marie on a march through the building.
Leading them directly to the Professor's office, neither Logan or Marie were surprised when their progress was temporarily halted by the emergence of the X-Men. Logan grabbed Cyclops by the collar of his shirt and shoved him bodily into the office, the two women jumping out of the way quickly, they all knew what Wolverine was capable of, and they did not want that directed at them.
Xavier was on his way out from behind his desk as the group filed in. They left the office door open, so all those in the hall could see and hear what was about to happen, Xavier had kept a lot of secrets through his life, the reason why it ended would not be one of those.
Wolverine dragged Xavier to the centre of the room, before slashing at the wheels of his chair, and the motor powering them, disabling the chair, before he spoke.
"You know who they are?" Logan asked darkly.
Xavier observed the men filling the room, and responded, "Yes, I know who they are, several are meant to be dead though."
"Yeah, that would have been awful convenient for you wouldn't it," Victor replied in amusement, as several of the others chuckled. Stryker had attempted to kill off most of them over the years when they had stumbled across his secrets, Logan didn't remember yet but he had largely been responsible for saving their lives, and helping them all to disappear off the radar.
"It's a shame, for you and for Stryker at least, that you're so bad at making some people die, that's really coming back to haunt you now," Logan said.
"Stryker?" Cyclops asked, where he had picked himself up off the floor and dusted himself off, still scowling darkly at the larger man. "You know where Stryker is? He's one of our informants, we haven't had any contact from him for days," he added.
"Informant!?" someone scoffed, angered, from the back of the room, nudging his six like that was the best joke he'd heard in a while. Several others chuckled too.
"I know where Stryker was, I know where his lab was too, what exactly happened to it, and to him when we blew the place sky high I couldn't explain, I know some of it came back down," Logan replied with a dismissive shrug, "Of course, you probably didn't hear anything from Stryker because one, you let his little pet escape, and then two, he didn't want to tell you what he found when Daddy Warbucks helped him track us down. Do you know what he found Chuck?"
Xavier scowled. "I'm assuming he discovered whatever lead you to leave here, I assume that was that you realised you got your jailbait pregnant."
"Oh boy did I ever, and in spectacular fashion too, it's one hell of an announcement to walk into a room and find your mate giving birth to a baby neither if you realised existed. I'm curious though, did you know, or did you just suspect? I had a feeling you were up to something when you didn't kick up a stink about me banging 'jailbait' but it wasn't until I uncovered intel from those last two lab raids I went on that I realised just what exactly you were playing at. Very well played by the way, you had me fooled, unfortunately you were the bigger fool for thinking you could keep me on a leash once I'd figured it out," Logan informed him.
"Wait," Storm interrupted, sounding confused. "Stryker runs a lab?"
"You want to answer that one Chuckles?" Victor asked, pointedly placing a file on his desk that Charles had no doubt contained all the evidence of Stryker's activities, and likely his own involvement in them.
"I was aware General Stryker was involved in laboratory operations, I assumed that's how he was getting us the intel..." Xavier began, in an attempt to downplay the revelation.
"Stop lying old man, you know damn well Stryker was using you to shut down his competition, just like you were using him, and that competition, to your political and financial gain. You only went after the labs Stryker gave you the all clear to. Hell, I've been through your mainframe, you even have intel on a few operations we didn't know about, so don't try your smoke and mirrors here, not if you want to live at least," a geeky looking merc at the back of the room spoke up. Logan couldn't remember his name either but his mutation was something to do with electricity, energy, or technology - something like that.
"So, you're here to kill us?" Storm asked, looking perturbed.
"Not you, not this time at least," Logan answered, "I'm willing to give you the opportunity to step up and do the right thing, this guy though, that's a whole other story," Logan growled darkly, as he moved over to Marie. Gently removing the baby carrier from her he took Niamh in his arms, before moving back to the cripple in the sabotaged chair.
"You see this, this here's my little girl, she's a cutey isn't she? Her mommy did a real good job cooking her up. Unfortunately for you, she's the reason you have to die, because it's the only way to protect her. I look after what's mine, and I tried to do that the nice way, and leave you to your fucked up little world, and how did you repay me? You sicked that fucker on me, on Marie, on our child, you almost got my mate raped, and my daughter killed. Now it's time to return the favour.
"I'd love to keep you here and let you watch your world burn but truth is, I don't even trust you to die with dignity, you're already trying to get inside heads aren't you, already trying to play your audience but that's not going to work -" he shot a single claw from his clenched fist into the old man's chest - "Not in time at least, I pull this blade out, you've got about two minutes for your life to flash before your eyes, are you gonna like what you see?" he hissed, as he slowly withdrew the blade, a river of blood following the motion.
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