Death Calls the Roll, Wolverine Arrives

Scott stared in horror as the heads of the police officers below burst like watermelons. His heart churned.

First there was one, then the number quickly climbed into double digits. All he had seen was Russell standing before the shattered floor-to-ceiling window, reaching out as though calling names off a list. He had no direct proof Russell had done it.

But given what was happening, who else could it have been?

As that thought raced through his mind, he hurried out of the café's second floor and sprinted for the ground-floor exit.

The night wind poured through the broken window, whipping the curtains like a tattered flag.

Russell stood at the edge of the window frame, barefoot on broken glass. He looked down at the flashing police lights and dense mass of dark figures below, playing with the growing clump of blood in his hand.

The blood contained X-Factor. It had come from the officers who harbored deep malice toward him.

The Emotion Points supplied by the system let him pinpoint anyone nearby who meant him harm.

As he gazed down at the hotel street, his eyes changed.

It was no ordinary widening or narrowing of his pupils. Something deeper, something fundamental, had shifted. The surge of energy had mutated his Molecular Vision, turning sight into something that could see through everything.

He could see the blood flowing through every officer below, the rhythm of their heartbeats, even the faint electrical signals firing from their nerve endings as adrenaline surged.

He could even see the fear hidden beneath their bulletproof vests—the trembling fear they tried to suppress with deep breaths.

His Emotion Points kept rising.

A dozen a second. Twenty. Thirty.

Hotel guests leaning out their windows to watch, civilians holding up phones beyond the cordon, officers crouched behind patrol cars with fingers on triggers they dared not pull—their shock, fear, and awe all became numbers jumping across his system panel.

But this time, Russell found no pleasure in it.

Those voices were too loud.

It was not a noise he heard with his ears. It reached straight into his brain, inescapable, like thousands of people screaming inside his head at once.

[Fear +1]

[Fear +1]

[Fear +1]

Each notification was a needle stabbing the nerve endings that had only just healed and still bore the marks of the energy's burns.

He shook his head, trying to throw off the noise, but it only grew louder, denser, harder to ignore.

[Mental Defense Experience +1]

[Mental Defense Experience +1]

"Lord Russell?" Felicity called from behind him, unease in her voice. "Are you... all right?"

Russell did not answer.

He looked down at his hand. The blood containing X-Factor dissolved into fundamental particles.

After being destroyed and rebuilt, his hands were as flawless as polished jade, yet they trembled slightly. Not from fear, but because the energy he had just extracted from Hound 10 was still at work inside him.

It raced through his blood vessels, leaped between muscle fibers, and beat out a rhythm in every cell nucleus—one he could feel but could not hear.

Out of control. The words pierced his mind like an icicle.

No. Not out of control. Excited.

The ache in his muscles and the weight pressing on his mind felt wonderful.

He drew a deep breath, closed his eyes, and tried to raise the wall of his Mental Defense again.

But the wall shook. Every brick shook. And the Emotion Points kept pouring in like a tide, an avalanche, a collapsing skyscraper.

[Fear +1]

[Fear +1]

It was no longer just the system's notifications. As his Psychic Telekinesis spread outward, he could feel the emotions spilling from everyone nearby and glimpse the thoughts beneath them.

Russell opened his eyes.

For a moment, they no longer seemed blue. They had darkened into a deeper shade, one that swallowed almost every trace of light—like the deep sea, the night sky, the event horizon of a black hole.

He turned around.

Felicity, who had been looking up at him, instinctively took a step back.

It was not fear. She felt something radiating from Russell, something invisible that pressed against her chest like air pressure.

Laura did not retreat, but her fruit knife stopped spinning. Her steel claws slid out without a sound—not because she meant to attack, but because her body had prepared for a fight before her mind could catch up.

"Russell," Laura said softly, her voice steady.

Russell glanced at her. Just once.

Then he turned back to the open window and jumped.

"Where are you going?" Felicity asked, her voice trembling.

"Downstairs." Russell's voice was flat and emotionless, exactly like Hound 10's had been.

"There are some annoying flies I need to swat."

Outside the hotel, beyond the cordon.

Thirty-seven patrol cars. Two armored personnel carriers. One hundred and forty police officers and National Guard soldiers.

After receiving orders from above and reports of metahumans fighting in Midtown Manhattan, this was the largest force the New York Police Department could deploy to the scene within forty minutes.

Chief Hawk of the NYPD Counterterrorism Unit led them. A twenty-five-year police veteran, he had seen plenty and had helped clean up after three alien invasions. He thought nothing could surprise him anymore.

Then he saw the man who, instead of leaving through the hotel lobby, leaped from more than ten stories up. Hawk realized he had been wrong.

Very wrong.

After the heavy impact, the young man who had jumped brushed the dust from himself and stood as if nothing had happened. The wounds from the fall healed in the blink of an eye.

He was barefoot and wore a well-fitting bathrobe. He had blond hair, blue eyes, and red burns like lightning streaks across his chest.

He walked casually, as though he had just stepped out of the bathroom to pick up a food delivery, not into a cordon of one hundred and forty armed personnel.

"Stop!" Hawk raised his megaphone, his voice echoing down the empty street. "This is the New York Police Department! You... you're surrounded! Hands on your head! Get down!"

Several officers gave their chief complicated looks and swallowed hard. Their faces all but said, Chief, you've got guts.

The young man did not stop.

He kept walking at an unhurried pace, his bare feet making a faint, almost inaudible scuff against the asphalt.

With every step Russell took, the officers in his path backed away on trembling legs. The guns in their hands offered no comfort.

The crowd beyond the cordon buzzed with noise. Phone flashes blinked in the dark like fireflies.

"Last warning! Stop, or... we'll use force!" Even Hawk sounded unsure of himself.

At last, the young man stopped.

He stood before the cordon, less than ten meters from the nearest patrol car. He looked up at Hawk—no, past Hawk, at the massive barricade of patrol cars, armored vehicles, and people behind him.

Then he smiled.

That smile sent a chill down Hawk's spine.

It was neither savage nor crazed. It was too calm—the calm of someone standing over an anthill, deciding whether to step on it.

"Shoot," the young man said. His voice was quiet, but everyone heard him clearly in the silent street.

Hawk gave no order.

He hesitated.

A second later, he felt that hesitation had saved his life, because the young man moved first.

He merely lifted a finger.

The nearest patrol car crumpled in the middle as though seized by an invisible hand. Its doors flew off, its roof caved in, and its chassis twisted at an impossible angle. Then it hurtled through the air and smashed into the armored vehicle behind it.

The crash of metal made everyone's ears ache. Sparks burst in the dark like a brief, brilliant iron flower.

[Fear +1]

[Fear +1]

[Fear +1]

The number on the panel began jumping by hundreds.

"Shoot!"

A shard of metal whipped past Hawk's ear, spraying blood.

"Open fire! Open fire!" Hawk finally shouted the order, his voice cracking.

One hundred and forty guns fired at once.

Bullets poured out like a downpour. Casings bounced across the ground, and muzzle flashes joined into a blinding sheet of white against the night.

The bullets—armor-piercing rounds, full metal jackets, even a dozen or so .50-caliber rounds from anti-materiel rifles—all stopped less than a meter from Russell.

They hung in the air like rain frozen in a photograph.

Russell studied the bullets and tilted his head.

Then he snapped his fingers.

One hundred and forty bullets reversed direction and flew back faster than they had come.

They did not retrace their paths. That would have been too merciful. Russell reassigned them, giving each one fresh acceleration.

Every bullet found a new target: a gun barrel, a scope, a helmet-mounted night-vision device, a radio antenna, a patrol car tire, an armored vehicle's side mirror.

Apart from a few bystanders who had done nothing and yielded no Emotion Points, most of the officers were unharmed.

Hawk stood rooted to the spot. The megaphone had been shot from his hand, and his right ear rang.

He looked at the young man, at the equipment destroyed with such precision, and at the soldiers who had collapsed to the ground in terror. Suddenly, he understood.

The young man was not trying to kill them. He was making a show of force.

No, that was not quite right. He would certainly kill people. The few unlucky souls—and the dozen or so officers whose heads had burst—were proof enough.

Perhaps he was playing with them.

Goddamn Mutants. Why don't you just die? Hawk wanted to tear the man before him apart, but he forced a smile onto his face.

[Hatred +1]

[Fear +0.6]

Russell stood amid a carpet of spent casings and looked down at his fingers. They were still trembling slightly. Not from overload. From wanting more.

When that last wave of Emotion Points rushed in, he had felt something more primal than power, a satisfaction deeper than instinct.

Like a starving man tasting his first bite of food. Like a drowning man breaking the surface and drawing his first breath.

He wanted more.

Getting Emotion Points was simple enough. Once he was strong enough, he could move the Golden Gate Bridge, shake a continental plate, or do something of the sort.

For now, the most important thing was to improve his mastery of his abilities and raise his own level.

But since they had come to him, he did not mind reaping another harvest.

Why not let the storm rage harder?

"Shoot," Russell said again.

No one moved.

"I'll say it one more time." He did not raise his voice, but every word struck the ears of everyone present like a hammer. "Shoot."

Hawk opened his mouth. Cold sweat streamed down his forehead. He wanted to speak, but not a single word came out.

Shoot or don't shoot? That was the question.

His body told him to shoot. His mind told him not to. Experience told him to run. But his feet were nailed to the ground, as though they had grown roots.

It was not courage. Fear had frozen him stiff.

Russell looked at him and shook his head slightly.

He raised his hand. Hawk's vision went black, and he returned to nature's embrace.

On the ground floor of the café across the street, Scott Summers had pushed his Ruby-Quartz Visor up onto his forehead, exposing his unshielded eyes. Destructive energy was gathering within them.

"This is bad," he murmured. "He's really lost control."

Scott put a hand to his visor and hesitated for less than a second.

The professor had said to help whoever was weaker.

Right now, the police and soldiers were the weaker ones. But if Russell truly began slaughtering them—

He took a deep breath and hooked his fingers around the edge of his visor.

Just then, a hand settled on his shoulder.

"Wait," a voice said behind him.

It was hoarse and deep, with a rough, metallic edge.

Scott spun around.

A man stood beneath the café's dim lights.

He wore a leather jacket, his hair was a mess, and he had at least three days' worth of stubble. With his hands in his pockets, he looked as relaxed as a man waiting for a beer at a bar.

But his eyes were amber—a shade no ordinary human's eyes could be—and they glimmered faintly in the dark.

"Logan?" Scott could hardly believe it. "What are you doing here?"

Wolverine did not answer.

He went to the window and looked at the young man outside, standing before the cordon with one hundred and forty guns pointed at him. The corner of Logan's mouth twitched.

"The professor sent me," Logan said casually. "He said the kid might need a—"

He thought for a moment and found the word. "—someone like him."

Russell's raised finger resumed its methodical roll call.

Then he stopped.

Not because he hesitated, but because he sensed something: a familiar resonance that reached down to his genes.

It was not the mechanical response of a brainwashed Hound 10. It was older, like a wolf recognizing another by scent in the dark.

He looked up at the café window across the street.

Amber eyes met blue eyes through the night.

Russell slowly lowered his finger.

He drew a deep breath, ignored Scott, and held Logan's gaze as he walked toward him.

Behind him, more than a hundred armed personnel stood motionless like statues.

No one fired. No one spoke. No one even dared breathe too loudly.

Hanton, chief of the Manhattan precinct and second only to Chief Hawk in rank among those present, felt his legs give way. He leaned against the police car behind him and realized his back was soaked with sweat.

"Pull back." His voice rasped like sandpaper. "Now."

He regretted taking part in the street blockade himself. He should have sent George instead.

On the café's ground floor, Wolverine took his hand off Scott's shoulder, pulled a cigar from his pocket and put it between his teeth without lighting it.

"This guy's even more trouble than the professor said."

Scott looked at him, wanting to speak but holding back.

"Don't worry." Wolverine took the cigar from his mouth and rolled it between his fingers. "He just needs someone to tell him how to use his powers properly."

He turned and headed outside.

"Where are you going?" Scott asked.

"To say hello." Wolverine waved without looking back. "Someone needs to tell him that a body that heals itself is a double-edged sword. He can't do whatever he wants just because he'll recover."

His footsteps faded through the doorway. Scott stood by the window, watching the police cars pull away and the people farther off who were still holding up their phones. Suddenly, this one night felt longer than the past ten years combined.

"Fuck," he muttered. He glanced at Logan again, then decided to face the man walking toward them alongside Wolverine.