Logan Came Calling

Brad stayed at the base for another two days. He had originally planned to leave Canada, but through surveillance far away in the United States, he discovered something interesting: someone had remembered him out in Canada and was planning to pay him a visit.

He spent those two days waiting for his visitor.

An old acquaintance: Wolverine, Logan.

Wearing a brown leather jacket and jeans, Logan rode a heavy Harley motorcycle, leaving billowing clouds of dust behind him.

Canada's logging industry had expanded too quickly in recent years, leaving parts of the natural environment badly ravaged. Logan clearly wasn't an environmentalist, though. He merely grumbled to himself about the dust obscuring his sunglasses.

A scholarly-looking young man wearing rectangular glasses sat behind him on the motorcycle, one arm wrapped around the old wolf's waist and the other hand covering his mouth and nose. The wind and grit were making his life miserable.

"Hey, I-pfft, pfft, pfft!"

The moment the young man opened his mouth, the relentless dust carried by the wind poured into it. He could only shut up and abandon his request for Logan to slow down.

Wolverine kept his mouth firmly shut as well, speeding along until he finally stopped outside the gate of Brad's "company" base.

But even after looking around for quite a while, Logan didn't get off the motorcycle.

He looked puzzled.

"This is the right place. Why does it look several times bigger?"

"Can you even hire construction workers this hardworking in Canada?"

Wolverine had no idea that, with a force of Terminators at his disposal, Brad could build infrastructure hundreds of times faster than the mysterious Eastern superpower of the next century.

The Canadian government had already been bought off anyway. With vast stretches of land available for the taking, Brad had no reason not to claim them.

At Brad's instruction, the base gates slowly opened. Smelling the familiar, pungent scent of metalworking in the air, Logan set his doubts aside, parked his motorcycle carelessly by the roadside, and headed inside with the young man.

"My God, this place is more than ten times bigger than the professor's castle!"

The young man exclaimed in amazement.

"Shut up, Hank! Your mouth barely stopped moving the whole way here."

Logan snapped at him.

The young man named Hank turned down the corners of his mouth unhappily and reached up to adjust the arm of his glasses.

An expressionless, burly man in a black suit approached them. "Mr. Brad asked me to escort you. Follow me."

Logan stared at the burly man, who remained rooted to the spot and merely extended a hand to indicate the way, and sniffed.

"That's a strong metallic smell."

Hank was puzzled too, but his current ordinary human form couldn't give him any more information. He merely felt that the man's every movement had a military air and guessed he might be a hired veteran.

Each occupied with his own thoughts, the two were guided into an elevator and taken to the top floor, where Brad's office was located.

At the end of a bright, white corridor stood an office with its doors wide open. They saw a figure sitting in a chair with his back to the entrance.

"Brad?"

Logan caught the familiar scent, but his vigilance surged. He had also smelled the same strong metallic odor that clung to the burly man.

The two approached the office doorway.

The executive chair slowly swiveled around. Logan's eyes widened instantly, while even Hank bared his teeth and sucked in sharp breaths.

Brad rose from the executive chair and placed his half-read book on the desk. His right electronic eye slowly rotated, its blue glow deep and cold.

He wore only a pair of white yoga pants, his bare feet resting on the clean marble floor. His half-mechanical upper body was exposed, and he spread his arms.

"You wouldn't come all this way without a reason, old friend. What brings you here?"

Logan swallowed. Brad's stature was nothing like the short figure he remembered, and those inhuman modifications filled Logan with pressure and fear.

No-to be precise, Logan's Beast Instinct had sensed how powerful Brad was.

"What happened to you?!"

In an instant, Logan thought of Stryker and realized that the metallic scent was the smell of adamanium alloy, the same one he had once smelled at Stryker Base.

But wasn't Stryker supposed to be dead?

Brad had taken over all his technology...

Was the Brad standing here still the Brad he knew?!

"Why did you turn yourself into this?"

The muscles in Logan's forearms kept tightening, his Bone Claws ready to spring out at any moment.

Seeing Logan like this, Hank didn't understand why, but Brad's appearance looked so much like a villain's that blue fur gradually began sprouting on Hank's face as well.

"Whoa, whoa, easy there. You didn't come all this way just to pick a fight with me, did you? No offense, but neither of you can beat me now."

Brad raised both hands and made a calming, pushing gesture.

"What happened to you?"

Hearing Brad's unchanged tone, Logan relaxed a little, but he still couldn't accept that Brad had become like this in the few years since they had last met.

"Some sophisticated modifications, all directed by me. Logan, I lost a few things. A robber teamed up with a thief and stole treasures that belonged to me. I modified myself to gain greater power, so that one day I can settle the score with them."

Brad walked lightly over to the liquor cabinet and took out a bottle of local Canadian whiskey.

"But it's still too early. Those two aren't people I can casually take on alone right now. Hmm... want a drink?"

Logan and Hank exchanged a glance and finally confirmed that the danger had passed. Logan relaxed his forearm muscles, and the blue fur on Hank's face receded.

Hank stepped forward. After all, he was far better than Logan at dealing with people, even if this man was Logan's old friend.

"Uh, Logan told me you used to be his colleague and a good friend. You're a mutant too, right?"

As he spoke, Hank did his best not to look at Brad's mechanical arms. After modifications like that, it was hard to say how much of a mutant remained.

"Of course. I'm still a mutant."

Brad poured himself a drink, then pointed at the desk lamp. Hank turned his head and clearly saw the bulb in the unplugged lamp begin flashing on and off.

Brad used the lamp to tap out a word in Morse code: mutant.

"You control electricity?"

Hank sounded delighted.

"Uh, not exactly. I can't control natural lightning, but as long as something involves a technological device, or a mechanical structure, I can manipulate it to some extent."

Brad took a sip of whiskey and licked the corner of his mouth. "As long as machinery is involved, it doesn't matter whether it uses electricity as its power source. Any form of energy works."

"Electric power is still the most common right now, though. I hear human governments have already started researching nuclear energy. I imagine that once those kinds of technological devices appear in the future, I'll be able to control them too."

Hank couldn't help turning his head to glance at the sprawling base buildings beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows. Brad's ownership of such a vast operation began to feel perfectly natural to him.

His ability sounded incredibly convenient.

But with so much property to his name, would Brad really agree once he heard why Hank had come?

Would Brad, with his immense wealth and influence, lean more toward the human side and reject mutants instead?

Brad noticed Hank's discomfort and hesitation. He gave what he considered a gentle smile.

"Tell me why you're here, Mr. Hank. I still identify very strongly as a mutant. If my fellow mutants need anything, I'll spare no effort to help."

Brad tossed out lofty promises without a second thought. With Logan, who had once joined him in destroying Stryker Base, there to vouch for him, his claims could easily win Hank's trust.