“Hey man! Don’t! Please, don’t kill me!” He looked at the man squirming at his feet. Already weak, disintegrating. Bones soft, flesh rotten. Yet begging for his life.
“Sorry, nothing personal. But you got to go. Can’t afford you to spread this shit any further,” he said, kneeled down and released his claws.
“Wait! Wait, I got kids to take care of!” The man shouted.
“Kids? Where?” He asked, his claws hovering just inches above the man’s ribcage.
“Two blocks away, at the corner of Main and Elm Street, they’re alone, they need food and...” He didn’t let the man finish. Quick jab cracked his sternum, brisk swirl of his wrist and fragile innards turned to bloody soup.

He stood up slowly, then reached for the radio mounted on his left shoulder. Tangent clicked.
“Customers at the corner of Main and Elm,” he said. Receiver crackled briefly.
“Copy that. Meet you there!” Her answer came through loud and clear, tone of her voice almost sickeningly chipper.
“Copy that. Over and out,” he grunted his response. Looked at the corpse splayed in front of him, then turned and started running, wondering for the umpteenth time would they be able to find a suitable vehicle from this little backwater town. He was getting sick of running.

She was already waiting for him, leaning against a signpost, her hands crossed over her chest, ankle thrown over another and her fingers playing staccato over her biceps.
“Took you long enough. Getting old?” She asked.
“I was old before I met you, kid... You ready?” He huffed and cracked his knuckles. She nodded.
“Good. I don’t know how many there are. I don’t know if they’re sick already, but the guy I met was already soft, they’re definitely infected.”
“What are we waiting for, then? Let’s go!” She urged him, taking a step towards the nearby building.
“They’re... They’re kids. Maybe you should sit this one out?”
“Fuck it. They’re sick. The faster we get this over, the better it is for all,” she said. And he couldn’t help wondering when exactly had she turned so pragmatic.

He didn’t have time to ask her about it. She bolted in to the building and he had no choice but to follow her. They didn’t know if the man had spoken the truth. There might be just a sorry bunch of kids waiting. On the other hand, there might be even sorrier bunch of adults waiting, sick and armed to the teeth, just waiting for them to enter.

“Marie! Fuck... Kid! Wait!” He hollered after her. She was too young and quick, he was too old and slow, but when dogs started to bark and howl and when she screamed it didn’t really matter.

It was the first apartment from the front door. Sturdy front door of the apartment had slammed shut. He could hear the sound of a scuffle from the inside, dogs barking and growling, kids crying and screaming and Marie cursing a blue streak. There was no time for finesse, no reason to pick the lock. He kicked the door open and stopped it from slamming back shut with his palm, simultaneously blocking a huge Rottweiler from tearing in to his throat, trapping it efficiently behind the door. Marie was struggling little further in the apartment, trying to fend off a rabid German shepherd. It was quite obvious that she was fighting a losing battle; the dog had already gotten off huge chunks from her both arms and thighs.
“Logan! Get this fucking mutt off from me!” She shouted.

He braced his back against the door, pushing against it with all he got to prevent the Rottweiler from escaping and reached for the Beretta he had holstered on to his thigh. One well-aimed shot ended shepherd’s life and rage, and Marie was free to carry on their horrendous task.
“I’ll take care of this dog; you go and find those kids!” He shouted. Marie nodded. Her wounds were bleeding profusely, but time for first-aid would come later.

He holstered his gun. The Rottweiler was going berserk behind his back, actually trying to chew its way through the door, jumping against it with such power that he nearly lost his balance.
“Okay, buddy... Let’s dance...” He groaned and pushed off from the door, releasing the dog. At first the beast was just standing there, looking at him and sniffling the air, quite confused. But it wasn’t going to roll over and play dead from his command. He could see it from the way the dog squared its frame, muscles coiling and black, glossy fur raising.
“Come and get it!” He shouted, urging the dog to attack. And attack it did, coming in low, teeth bared and blunt nails scratching and clacking over the cheap linoleum floor.
“That’s a good boy...” He murmured, grasping the dog from its jaws and twisting sharply, grimacing from the sound of shattering bone. The dog fell limp on his hold, neck broken and the light of life escaping from the brown eyes.

“Kid? Are you alright?” He asked, walking over to where she stood at the doorway that leads to the only bedroom of the apartment. The sight that greeted him was perhaps one of the saddest he had seen in long time. Two kids, lying huddled together on a messy bed, both of them dead, by their own hands. The knife they had used to each other was gleaming wetly, dark blood already coagulating on it. He grasped the bed spread that had fallen on to the floor and covered the children with it.
“Come on. We should go. Summers is probably waiting for us already,” he said, nudging her shoulder. Marie shook out of her musings and turned to look at him.
“They rather took their own lives than waited for us. What does it make us to be?” She asked. And he had no answer, at least not one he was willing to speak out loud.
“Doesn’t matter what they think we are. We have to get to the EVAC zone before you bleed to death,” he said gruffly and forced her out from the apartment, out from the building, under the dim light of the dying sun.

They walked together through now terminated town. Blackbird, ugly artefact from even uglier era of Mutant War was standing at town square, loading ramp invitingly open. Pilot, Scott Summers was sitting on it, last rays of the sun reflecting from the visor covering his eyes.
“She got a bit banged, tell Jean to take out medi-kit,” Logan shouted, grasping Marie who suddenly collapsed, and carried her on his arms the last steps, laying her gently down to a gurney. Jean Grey, their doctor took over, and he moved in to the cockpit with Summers.

“How was it?” Summers asked. Logan shrugged his shoulders, buckling the seatbelt.
“The same,” he grunted.
“Ready to go?” Summers asked.
“Ready,” he confirmed, and Summers started the procedure that would raise them up on to the rapidly darkening sky.

It was the same, day after day. They’d land, Marie and Logan would clean up their destination and Summers and Jean would clean up them after it was over. Summers would always ask how it was, Logan would always tell him it was the same, and they’d take off.

He waited until the blackbird levelled, then unbuckled and stood up.
“I’ll go and check on the kid,” he said to Summers who nodded, still fiddling with the controls of the jet.
“Oh, Logan? Could you ask Jean to come here? I need to speak with her, Summers called after him.

He found the good doctor cleaning up the mess she had made while stitching up Marie. Used up wads of cotton, dirty needles and scraps of tape littered the floor around the gurney.
“Scott wanted to talk with you,” he said. Jean picked up handful of litter and stuffed it to a trash bin.
“I’ll be right with him, I just clean up this...”
“I’ll take care of it. Go.”

It wasn’t until now that Jean realized that he needed to be alone with Marie. She left, leaving him the responsibility of the damage control. For that this essentially was. He’d sit down and ask Marie how she was doing. They’d talk about this or that. He’d tell corny jokes and make her laugh, or he’d just hold her and let her cry. On the ground she was a fiery spitfire, ready to take on anything, heaven or hell, she’d pull through, but up here... She was essentially just a girl, a girl old past her years and she needed an outlet for all the filth she faced on daily basis.

“That was quite a stunt you pulled back there,” he admonished her gently.
“Look who’s talking. You do that all the time. Barge in without checking up the place first,” she quipped.
“Yeah. I do that all the time because I can get away with it. You don’t heal like I do, kid,” he reminded her.
“So? I can drop them with my skin,” she said.
“Before or after they tear off your head?” He asked. Marie crossed her arms over her chest, huffing and opening her mouth for a witty retort.
“This isn’t some sort of a pissing contest, kid. We both know that you got balls. And we both know that I got even bigger balls. Let’s leave it at that already, okay?”

She just stared at him for a long moment, seconds ticking by. Then, all of a sudden the excited gleam in her eyes died down, and she was just a girl, insecure girl.
“Logan? Are we... Are we monsters?” She asked. Not once had she phrased that question this directly. Not once had she been this blunt. And this time there was no escaping the answer.
“For them we are,” he started.
“No bullshit, Logan. Just tell me the truth,” she demanded. He shook his head.
“There’s no one truth left to be told, kid. The plague took care of it.”

The plague. A year back people in power decided to solve the mutant issue once and for all. They released a virus, bred in secrecy. Designed to target only mutants. Their grand scheme backfired only few weeks after. The virus, carefully crafted and extremely balanced creature of art got confused. It fused together with cells it was supposed to destroy and got twisted beyond recognition. It was no longer targeting gene X that was present only in mutants. It was seeking out human physique. Gene X had become deterrent for it, mutants immune to Legacy.

What had started as a means to end war and wipe out mutants soon turned to swansong for man. And it was up to those who survived to cleanse the earth.

Who was to throw the first stone? Who was to pass judgement of the actions that took place? Mutants? Humans?

“From where I stand I see no monsters. There are just us and them, and they’re rotting away. We’re just... We’re just the cleaning crew, taking care of the mess they left behind,” he ventured, his eyes fixed on to blank nothing he saw reflecting from the window in front of him. The girl on the gurney took his hand and let out a heavy sigh.
“I don’t think I can do this much longer, Logan. After what happened today, after seeing what those kids did...”
“This is a fucked up world, kid. And nobody’s going to ask if you can make it. Nobody’s going to be nice enough to even consider the possibility that this all is too much to bear for you. We are going to keep going until there’s good enough reason to stop. So stop your fucking whining, Marie. We’re landing in couple of hours. Just a gas station this time. Shouldn’t be too many customers, ten at tops.”

So pull your shit together. For Logan as sure as hell wasn’t able to do that for her. At the beginning there had been fifteen of them in this jet. Tightly cooped up together, all for one and one for all. And one after another they had left the ranks. Some of them died. Too many of them simply fled. He wasn’t going to give Marie an easy way out. He’d need her when this all was over. He knew her well enough to know that out of all the people he knew she’d be the most likely candidate to pull it trough. After their little operation was over she’d be the one still standing. She’d be the one to start rebuilding.

Landing was a bit tricky, front of the gas station was riddled with abandoned cars. Summers managed to bring the jet down with a narrow marginal, they’d had to move few of the trucks blocking their way before they could rest, but that had to wait. Patrons of the gas station had obviously heard about them. As soon as Summers lowered the loading ramp to let Marie and Logan out they attacked, wielding improvised weapons. Shovels, baseball bats and even shotguns. At some point they had run out of shells so there was no real threat involved. Logan was able to fend them off easily.

“Two got away. We better keep an eye on them. They’ll be back, sooner or later,” he grunted, eyeing the carnage laid out on the ramp in front of them.
“Ready to go, kid?” He asked. Marie standing at his side merely nodded and skipped down the ramp after him. Now she was jittery, even more so when she realized exactly how easy it was to hide between cars and buildings.
“I’ll move those trucks, watch my back,” he said.

If they were lucky the trucks would have keys and enough gas in them. If not, he’d have to haul them aside by sheer willpower. Jean had nearly burnt off her telekinetic abilities few weeks earlier and was still slowly recovering.

Lady Luck was for once favouring them. Both of the trucks were cooperating and in no time the landing zone was clear, they could take off as soon as the need to do so arose. They held a brief meeting in front of the jet. An important, high-level meeting, like they did every time when an opportunity to spend a night in real bed presented itself.
“Heads and I’ll take the bed with the Kid,” Logan said. Summers tossed the coin. For a fleeting second Logan considered calling off the bet, Scott and Jean really could have used a night together, but one look at Marie confirmed him that she deserved at least a chance for a night off.

Coin fell.
“Heads,” Summers called it. Logan smelt a lie on him, but didn’t call it. Summers probably had a good reason for wanting to spend the night in the jet with Jean.

It wasn’t much, but it was their first chance of privacy in three whole weeks. Small and dingy backroom of the gas station with one narrow bed and the adjoining bathroom. Air in there smelt a bit stale, but for some reason the people who had taken shelter from the station hadn’t used the small apartment so it was clean. They walked in and Logan closed the door, then barricaded it with a heavy dresser that he dragged in front of it. Marie was already undressing, tearing off her clothes as she walked towards the bathroom.
“You want to fuck?” He asked. Considering the injuries she sustained at the mercies of the dogs earlier it was highly unlikely, but it couldn’t hurt to ask.
“I think about it,” she promised, then closed the bathroom door.

Fuck. A bit crass, but that’s all there really was. After you spend your days slaughtering people like they were cattle you really had no tender feelings left, only something vaguely resembling the need of comfort.

He could hear the water running. He could see her in his mind’s eye, curled over the sink, rinsing the ivory skin of her face, arms and breasts with cold tap water. She’d throw back her head to keep her hair from getting wet. She’d complain that the water was cold. In the end she’d send him to hunt a bottle of shampoo because she wanted to wash her hair too.

The door of the bathroom cracked partially open.
“Logan?”
“Yeah. I’ll go and see if they have any shampoo in there,” he huffed and grabbed the dresser, moving it carefully aside.
“Thanks.”
“No prob, kid. Just be careful. Those two sick morons are still out there. If somebody tries to get in, make sure it’s me before you open the door.”

He was standing in a small convenient store in front of two bottles of shampoo that were left on the shelf when his receiver crackled.
“Radar picked up movement behind the station,” Summers’ voice carried over, a mere whisper.
“Copy that. Will check it out,” he answered with equally quiet and low voice. Again the receiver crackled.
“Logan? Is that you behind the door?” Marie.
“No. I’m still trying to decide if you want apple or strawberry,” he answered.
“Bring both. And be careful. There are two customers waiting,” she warned him.
“Copy that, darling. Anything else you need?”
“Just you.”
“Over and out.”

He crept quietly to the back door of the small apartment he now shared with Marie. There were two men standing, one of them trying to open the door, the other standing in lookout. He walked to them calmly, the small basket with Marie’s shampoos in it hanging over his arm. Just a regular guy returning home from a brief shopping spree.
“What’s up, fellows?” He asked. Both men turned to look at him. Their eyes took in his appearance. Black leather uniform. Radio mounted on his shoulder. Rust coloured blood splatter adorning his hands and chest. For a long moment they just stared at him. Then suddenly realization dawned on them.
“Shit. You’re one of them, aren’t you?” Taller of the two men asked.
“I guess I am.”
“And that broad inside... She’s with you?”
“Yeah.”
“And you’re here to... Kill us?”
“Yeah.”

Two men posed no real threat to him. He didn’t even have to drop the basket he was carrying, they were dumb enough to try and attack him. One he left with a broken neck, the other died of broken heart, quite literally. Logan’s claws made short work of his ribcage. After it was over he knocked on to the door.
“Kid? It’s me. Open up.”

The door cracked open and Marie stepped aside to let him in. Her gaze swept over the two corpses, then she closed the door.
“This is madness, Logan. This... This is insane,” she said.
“You have a better way to deal with them?” He asked.
“We could just let them die on their own.”
“And risk the Legacy mutating again? Thanks, but no thanks, kid. I rather take care of it now than wait for it to turn against us again.”
“But do we really have to kill them all?”
“Um... Shit. I’m going to wash up and get in to bed. You can stay up and play twenty questions with Scott. I’m sure he’d appreciate your newly found morale far better than I...”

He peeled off his uniform and got as far as to the bathroom sink, his head ducked under the spray of cold water when Marie came after him, her small fists connecting with his back, leaving bruises and abrasions that healed over instantly. She was a silent fighter. She wasn’t screaming or crying, she was simply kicking, scratching, hitting and biting, and sooner than he thought it possible she got him pinned to the floor, her reddened face hovering only inches from his, her breath escaping with silent hiss from between her clenched teeth.

“I’m not like you, Logan,” she wheezed, her fingers digging in to the soft underside of his jaw, her nails parting his skin.
“I’m not insane like you...” She murmured.
“I don’t want to keep killing people just because of killing. I want you to let me go!” She finally screamed out her pent up rage and frustration. He grasped her arms trying not to aggravate the raw wounds underneath the thick dressings.
“I can’t let you go... You fucking know that...” He growled, trying to draw air that felt thick as a syrup, passing through the narrow gap she allowed him to have. He could feel his windpipe giving in under her ministrations.
“They need you... Scott, Jean... Professor X... They all need you when this... is over...” He managed to rasp before his throat filled with blood and bits and pieces of cartilage. With little strength he had left he pushed, throwing Marie away from him and turned on his side, curling over his mutilated front, trying to recoup enough to crawl away from her. There seemed to be no hurry. Marie lay defeated in the corner, her eyes fixed on to him. There was no fight left in her.

“Why the hell I am so fucking important?” She whispered.
“You know it damn well...” He coughed and rose carefully on to his hands and knees, spitting out blood and chunks of flesh his body dispelled from his raw throat.
“You’re probably the only sane person left in this fucked up mess they cooked for us... The rest of us, we need you when this is over... We need you to pull this shit together...” He croaked and scuttled out of the bathroom, dragging his battered body to upright position against the doorjamb. She followed him and urged him to lean on her. They wobbled over the floor unsteadily and crashed on to the bed. He was too wiped to bother with the cover. He turned on his side and covered her partly with his frame, pulling her flush against his chest.
“This good enough for you?” He asked.
“Yeah. I guess so. Go... Good night, Logan,” She whispered, stuttering only slightly.
“Good night, kid. Sleep tight...”

“You didn’t even ask if my skin was off...”
“Figured you’d killed me at the bathroom if that’s what you wanted. Good night, kid.”

“Why do you trust me so much, Logan?”
“I just do. Good night, Marie.”

“Logan?”
“Good night is only polite way to shut up the person you’re sleeping with.

“Good night, Logan.”

Crackling of the radio woke them up only moments later. They untangled groggily and Logan reached for his uniform.
“What is it, Scooter?” He asked after clearing his throat.
“Radar is picking up movement.”
“Could you be bit more specific? Where?” He asked. After a short pause Summers answered with a hollow voice.
“Everywhere. The Blackbird is surrounded. I counted twenty hostiles before the screen turned to blur.”
“Blur?”
“There’s too many to count. We have to take off before they start tearing on to the hull. We’ll be back for you guys later.”
“Copy that. Over and out.”

Marie stared at him, her eyes wide. From excitement or fear he didn’t know.
“I guess we just have to hope that they don’t know about us...” She whispered. Cornered like this, locked in to a small, rickety hut at the back of the gas station they had no means to fend off the horde of attackers.
“We better stay quiet. There’s a chance they don’t know about us,” Logan whispered and started to put on his uniform.
“But we better get dressed anyway. They might be after the Blackbird first because they know it can escape...”

Half an hour later it became quite apparent that the army of survivors waiting outside were oblivious of their presence. After the Blackbird took off they just stood there, shuffling their feet. One of them, probably the leader of the group was standing head taller than the others.
“See? They’re scared of us! If we show them that we’re not going just to lie down and die they leave us alone!” The giant bellowed.
“This sure could pose a problem for us...” Logan murmured. They followed the events through a small window, trying not to get caught.
“Too long we have had to live in fear! Too long they have had the upper hand! I say we find and get rid of those filthy animals! This country belongs to us!”
“He sounds awfully sure about that,” Marie whispered.
“Remember Xavier’s big speech right before we took off?” Logan asked. She blushed. Tone of the voice had been different, words more eloquent, but the message had been identical with the one that the giant boasted.
“But... If you think that Xavier was wrong, why are we doing this? If you think that killing all these people is wrong, why...”
“There’s no wrong or right, kid. It’s us or them. Even more so now than before. They carry the disease, but there’s no guarantee that we stay immune to it. After all, it was originally designed to target us.”
“But what about the cure?” She asked, still whispering. Logan huffed and rubbed his face tiredly.
“Kid? You have no idea how good it is that you’re asking those questions. But right now there’s only one answer. We keep killing them because there’s no cure. We keep killing them because Hank can’t guarantee that he’ll find one anytime soon. I’ll be more than happy to whip up one mean first-aid express as soon as the cure is finished, but in the mean time it’s better to keep the numbers of the contaminated as low as possible.”

There were other termination squads out there; they had even met few of them. As far as Logan’s crew knew, they were the only ones looking at this as a precaution. Rest of the teams were merely taking their revenge over every crime humans had committed against mutants during the war. Logan didn’t know if it made their cause any more justified than the others, but so far he had done damn good job at closing his eyes and ears. He could only hope that Marie would still be able to question their actions after this all was over.

War party showed no signs of leaving. In fact, they began preparing what looked like a home base, forming a barricade around the gas station from the abandoned trucks and other debris that was lying around.
“That doesn’t look too good. Soon they’re going to start looking around and they’ll find us,” Marie whispered.
“Yeah. We should leave,” Logan admitted, then tried to contact the Blackbird. It was either shot down or out of range. He hoped for the latter.
“How do we do that? If they see us, it’s all over. They’ll tear us apart for what we have done,” Marie hissed.
“I could arrange a diversion. Give you enough time to get away.”
“What? Are you nuts? You really think that I’d leave you in to their hands?”
“No, I’m not planning to get caught. I’ll just raise loud enough ruckus to draw their attention. When they look in to it, you can run away. I’ll find you later.”
“That has got to be the shittiest plan ever. No dice, Logan.”
“I wasn’t asking if you approve. Right now you don’t have the authority to question me. I still outrank you, missy.”
“Fuck you.”
“Love you too, kid. I was thinking that I’d blow up the gas pumps. It’ll take them a while to recover from that blast. If we’re lucky, we’ll both get away before they even realize what happened. With little more luck they’ll think of it as an accident and won’t even start to look for us.”

He laid flat on the roof of the gas station. He knew that Marie was somewhere below him, getting ready to bolt out and run as soon as explosions rocked their surroundings. He cursed his own stupidity. Shockwaves from those explosions would toss her just like they’d do to humans who were currently standing at the general vicinity of the pumps. Well, there was every possibility that the war party would scatter and die as the end result. Chances of that happening were in fact far greater than any of the men surviving the blast, but he had long ago learned not to rely on chances alone.
“But what choice do I have?” He murmured, raising the Beretta, again inwardly cursing, this time for his lousy weaponry. From this range it would be a small miracle if he hit his target, the most vulnerable spot at the gas pumps. Even if he did that, it would be even greater miracle if the impact of the shot would create a spark that would ignite the explosion. He drew a deep breath and cracked his neck. Breathed out and took aim.
“Here goes nothing...”

He was running blindly through hell, burning ground and air scorching his skin and flesh. He could still hear screams and cries. Explosion after another rocked the world, battering his eardrums and throwing him off balance, forcing him on his hands and knees. He could smell the burning gasoline. He could taste it at the back of his throat. It was coating his tongue. It stung in his eyes. His skin was blistering, his leather uniform slowly charring and melting. He didn’t know which way was up, which down. He could only hope that Marie had gotten far enough to avoid the eye of the fiery storm he was no wading through.

They were dead. Had to be, all of them. There was no way a human could survive the inferno he had created. Underground tanks the gas pumps were connected to have been full of the black and sticky gold. The owner of the station had probably gotten them filled up right before the shit hit the fan, and nobody had thought to take advantage of it later.

He stumbled over a small and shallow creek. Water running there was now boiling and offered only brief respite. He saw a footprint on the muddy edge of the stream, approximately the size of Marie’s boots. She had gotten at least this far.

His leg got caught to a tangle of branches and again he fell, scraping his well cooked face against the hard and unyielding ground. He spat out the debris he had accidentally chomped on and stood up, now first time truly taking in his surroundings.

This part of the forest had been saved from the initial blast waves, but the fire was rapidly approaching, feeding from the dry litter covering the forest floor and greedily reaching higher, climbing towards the canopy. At the opposite direction he could only see a scorched ground, and little further complete destruction, a crater surrounded with various bits and pieces of the structure that had previously served as their shelter for the night. Black and thick cloud of smoke was rising high on the clear sky. Summers would see that.

It took a while to sink in. Summers. He’d see the smoke. At first Logan didn’t know why it was so goddamned important, and why it was a bad thing. Summers would see the smoke. He’d return and see... Summers would see the ground zero.
“Fuck...”

He’d had to find Marie. He’d had to find her soon, preferably before their ride arrived. From the sight of the smoking crater Summers would assume that they were gone and he’d leave. Logan had no way of contacting the jet, not after his radio had melted to a charred lump of plastic and tangled wires.

“Marie!” He croaked, trying to clear his throat and spit out the back tar-like substance that was blocking his throat.
“Marie! Kid!” Only echo of his own voice and loud crackle of flames answered.
“Shit... Marie! Get back!” No answer.
“Marie! Our ride will be here soon! Get back here!” Flames crept closer; forcing him to back out from their way or lose the little skin he still got left.
“Kid! If you’re not here by the time I count to ten I’ll leave you to the wolves!” He practically screamed, trying to bestow proper authority in to his voice. In his own ears it sounded as a pitiful whisper, and he knew there was no use to try and call her. She wouldn’t hear him over the fire.

It was the hardest decision of his life to turn back and seek the safest route back to the crater previously known as a gas station, rather than to pursue Marie.

He stood there, torn between returning to Marie’s trail and waiting for Summers to return. Heat from the blast and following fire had already lowered to almost bearable level; he could actually feel the cooling wind swooping in to soothe his burning skin.

He was about to go after Marie when the noise of the jet engines alerted him of the approaching aircraft. He could see the sleek, black jet in the distance, closing in rapidly. Instinctively his hand rose to reach the radio, his fingers closing over the slowly cooling black lump that had now fused on the still tender flesh of his shoulder. He tore it off annoyed, wound it left bled sluggishly but he knew it would knit shut soon enough.

“She’s gone! We better find her before somebody else does!” He croaked as soon as the jet had landed and the loading ramp fell open.
“What do you mean, gone?” Jean asked, confused look crossing her face.
“Gone as in I have no fucking clue of where Marie is, and I’m not as sure as hell going to leave her out there! Tell Scott to circle the perimeter, the radar should pick her up no matter where she is!” He growled, clearing the ramp with swift strides, his eyes not truly registering the young woman sitting on one of the seats reserved to passengers. He walked straight past her in his haste to alert Summers of a lost member of their crew.
“Logan!” The girl called after him.
“Not now, I have... Shit!” He twirled around.

It was Marie. Sitting right there in front of him, unharmed for the most part, only small reddened patch of skin adorning her left cheek and her long hair slightly singed, still smelling of burnt gasoline and hair.

He couldn’t get to her fast enough, he nearly stumbled over his own feet, then she was there in his arms, her heart beating reassuringly and her lips curling to a radiant smile. There were tears in her eyes as she buried her face against his chest.
“I thought you were gone! When it was over I... I came back here and saw... I saw all those corpses, and you weren’t there and I thought...” She kept babbling incoherently, running her hands over his still healing flesh and skin over and over, seeking confirmation that what she saw was truly there. He merely held her, trying still to comprehend that all the time he had been running after her, worried over his skull, she had in fact been with Scott and Jean, looking for him.
“I wanted to call you, but my radio broke, and I couldn’t shout, my throat hurt, so I tried to get back here but I had to go around the fire and I got lost, but Scott and jean found me and...”

He tuned out her voice and buried his face to the side of her neck, suddenly embarrassed. Hadn’t he been so wrapped up in to the situation and his own role in it he probably would have realized that a girl like Marie wouldn’t just roll over, play dead and wait for her knight in shining armour to ride in to rescue her.

“I’m... I’m sorry, kid. I don’t know what I was thinking,” he whispered, his lips grazing the delicate skin of her throat. He wasn’t ready to let go of her, not quite yet.
“Sorry? For what?” She asked, trying to pull away from his embrace to see his face.
“I actually thought that you’d run like a headless chicken. I should know you’d do better than that,” he mumbled, grinning sheepishly and releasing her.
“There’s nothing to be sorry about, Logan. It’s... It’s good to know that you actually care for me,” she whispered.

Jean had witnessed their exchange. Now she cleared her throat to remind them that they weren’t alone.
“I am sorry, too, but I need to check you up, Logan,” she said.
“For what? I heal,” he said.
“And if your skin heals over all that burnt mess on your back you’re going to be in serious trouble. I need to scrape off all that plastic, kevlar and leather before they become a part of you,” Jean said sternly and took his hand, leading him to a gurney at the back of the jet.

He heard Scott calling Marie as he laid face down on to the gurney. Slight clinking of surgical steel as Jean prepared her equipment. Then silence and distant chatter as Scott spoke with Marie.
“Well, doc... Aren’t you going to get to work?” He asked, turning his head until he could see Jean who was standing at the side of the gurney.
“There’s nothing wrong with your back, Logan. It’ll heal on its own. I needed to speak with you alone,” the woman whispered. His eyebrow rose questioningly.
“Since when have we started keeping secrets?” He asked. Jean looked none too please over the situation. He could smell how uncomfortable she was.
“Since this morning. Scott contacted Xavier to report our progress.”
“And?” There was nothing alarming yet. It was a common occurrence, even mandatory to keep the professor briefed and to stay in touch with the home base.
“First contaminated test results from mutant blood have emerged. First ones after the virus last mutated,” Jean said, her voice faltering. Bout of nausea gripped Logan’s innards. Too slow. They had been too slow after all.
“Hank counted 100% mortality rate. As... As far as we know, it’s not airborne yet, but it probably is only a matter of weeks.”
“Did Xavier have further instructions?” Logan asked. Jean shook her head, her eyes turning towards the cockpit where Marie was laughing at something that Scott had said.
“Only one. He told us not to come home and stay clear of the infected individuals.”
“Fuck this. For the last five weeks we have been practically bathing in their blood and shit. It’s probably safe to assume that there’s no harm done for me, but what about you, guys?” Logan asked. Again Jean refused to look him in the eyes, keeping her gaze fixed firmly to the back of Scott’s head.
“I tested us all...” She started and swallowed.
“And?” Logan urged her to continue.
“I almost hoped for a positive result. Would have made things easier...” Jean said and paused again, then forced herself to look at him.
“As of now we’re all healthy,” she finished.
“And that’s somehow a bad thing?” Logan asked confused.
“At some point we have to land for fuel, food and water. We need to test each and every item before we can bring them on board. We have to stay wary of the possible attacks. We have to prepare ourselves for the possibility that one of us gets sick. We can only stay up in the air and hope for the best.”
“When you put it that way... We’re screwed, right?”
“You could say so. I didn’t... I didn’t know how to tell this to Marie. She’s... She has been waiting for our return to home, and...” Jean began to stutter, trying her best not to cry, not to surrender under the fear and despair. Logan reached her hand and grasped it with his own, hoping against hope that it was some sort of mistake, a mix-up in Hank’s lab. Except that Hank did no mistakes. Blue and furry doctor checked, double-checked and triple-checked everything before releasing any kind of information to anybody.

They were screwed.

He checked the controls of the jet once more. Summers had begun tutoring them all at the finer arts of piloting a plane. At the beginning it didn’t really matter if Scott was the only one with pilot’s licence, he stayed safely in the jet with Jean while Logan and Marie carried out their gut wrenching agenda. And they all had been immune to Legacy. Those days were far behind. It was now third week of the apocalypse. Three weeks had passed since they had last heard about what was going on back at the home base, and Logan started to wonder if it truly was the right thing to do to abandon them.

Scott was slumbering on the co-pilot’s seat. Marie and Jean were sleeping at the back. The sun was rising, and the view opening from the narrow window in front of him was sickeningly beautiful and calm. Light upper cloud, fragile wads of intangible cotton beneath the jet, sky colouring from black to light shades of red and yellow, airspace clear, no turbulence. Nothing to take his mind off from the fact that during the night he had turned the course painstakingly slowly, inch by inch to distract Scott and now they were flying over heavily contaminated area of New York.

He switched on the auto-pilot, previous programming forcing the jet to fly in wide circle, and leaned back on his seat.
“You do know that we can’t land?” Jean whispered, her breath tickling his earlobe. He closed his eyes and grit his teeth.
“You knew?” He asked with a low voice, trying not to wake up Scott.
“I knew before you made your first move. You’re not the asshole you try to make yourself to be. But I know you’re not stupid, either. If you land now, all three of us will die and you’ll be left alone.”
“I know. I just... Fuck. It doesn’t feel right. They could all be dead as far as we know,” he huffed, swallowing and blinking rapidly. There was a strange lump forming at the back of his throat.
“They are dead, Logan. I felt their deaths a week ago. Professor... He wasn’t sick long, he... He was so fragile... With Hank it took the longest, you know how strong he was, right to the end I thought he’d pull through, then one morning he just disappeared...” Jean struggled not to cry, not to raise her voice.
“Scott doesn’t know. Marie doesn’t know. But I know, and now you know. They’re gone. All of them,” she whispered and retreated back on to the seat she had previously occupied. Logan fought down his instinctual urge to call her a liar. Her scent was telling the truth. He swallowed the bitter disappointment, then programmed a new course, one that would steer them clear of the air space of N.Y. He waited for a longest moment until the radar showed only sea beneath and shook Scott who woke up slightly groggy, none too pleased of the disturbance.
“Take the wheel. I need to talk with Marie,” he grunted and stood up. Scott nodded and started checking up the systems. Logan was already out from the cockpit when Scott’s surprised exclamation drew his attention.
“Logan, you asshole! Didn’t I tell you to stay clear of any bigger cities?”
“That must have slipped from my mind. But it should be all good now, I programmed new coordinates,” he said. He could hear Jean getting up. He was quite sure of her intentions. As he approached sleeping Marie he could hear the door dividing the cockpit from the cabin sliding shut and locking up. Mercurial creature that was Jean’s mind brushed against him briefly, leaving him with a distinct feeling that the doctor wished some privacy for the next couple of hours. It suited him well.

“Kid?” He whispered, hoping to wake her up gently. It was a futile attempt. As soon as her eyes opened she was wide awake, her whole being pulsing from pent up energy and her eyes searching his, her gaze full of questions he could not answer. She opened her mouth to voice out those questions. He pressed his index finger over her full and soft lips to keep the questions at bay, then leaned quickly closer and locked her in to a kiss, hoping to swallow them all.

Eventually they had to break his desperate attempt, if not for else, they needed to breathe. As they parted Marie looked at him, those questions still swirling in her eyes.
“Logan?” She whispered. He shook his head.
“They’re gone, kid. Jean told me. There’s nobody left.”

Instead of crying she nodded, then kissed him. In a way it was pathetic he noted at some level. They were only trying to convince each other from the fact that they were still very much alive and breathing. That notion didn’t prevent him from participating. It didn’t prevent him from taking off her shirt. It didn’t bother him when he suckled and pawed at her breasts, twisting her nipples until she was practically begging him to do something before she screamed. And when he sat down and she straddled him, her hot and tight core swallowing his shaft and her nails digging in to his shoulders he could almost forget the grim reality. There was only scent of her arousal, slick feel of her soft pussy around his cock and his own muffled cries of pleasure as he struggled not to come before she got her release. When she screamed out her pleasure he clamped his palm over her mouth, reluctant to let Scott and Jean in to their semi-private coupling.

“What do you think?” Logan asked. Scott rubbed the back of his head, his eyes fixed on to the radar.
“I was thinking about how nice it would be to sleep on a real bed for a change. I was thinking how good a fresh, rare steak would taste. But you wanted my opinion about that lumber mill we passed few minutes ago, right?”
“That would do.”
“I don’t know. It’s a low risk. Low yield as well. Are you willing to risk everything for possibly nothing?” Scott asked. Logan shrugged his shoulders.
“There was a small airfield close by. No big cities, just a small shanty and it looked deserted. From the sight of that forest I’d say that the mill was closed long before legacy hit.”
“We could get fuel. But what about food and water? If nobody lived there, I highly suspect...”
“I could hunt,” Logan proposed. The fact that Scott was now steering the blackbird in a wide circle around the area they were discussing gave him hope. At the beginning of this all he had been far from thrilled over the prospect of spending a small eternity up in the air, but so far he had endured it. Now there was a chance to walk on a sturdy ground and breathe fresh air. He wasn’t going to give it up without a fight.
“And I think I saw a small lake down there as well. Looked clear enough for me,” he pressed on. Resolve on Scott’s face began to crack.
“I don’t know... It’s...” As if on cue Jean walked in to the cockpit.
“Are we going to land soon? I really need to pee, but I’d rather wait until we’re on the ground than risk turbulence,” she said.
“Oh, for fuck’s sakes. Buckle up, people. I’ll bring this bird down,” Scott huffed.
“Better do as he tells, he got his licence by watching Top Gun,” Logan smirked.
“You’d rather land on your own?” Scott asked. Logan raised his hands, still smiling.
“She’s all yours, Scooter. Just make sure that you don’t wreck our wings. There’s no mechanic or spare parts available if you break something...”

It was meant as a joke, but too soon they learned the true meaning behind those words. One of the landing gears let out an alarming shriek as the Blackbird touched the ground, then suddenly the whole jet tilted on one side and they could hear the feared sound of metal tearing.
“Oh, Christ. That just didn’t happen,” Scott whispered, his hands still grasping the armrests of his seat.
“I hate to break it to you, Scooter, but I heard that, too. It definitely happened,” Logan said, mixed feelings of disappointment and all-engulfing relief sloshing inside of him.
“It was the wing. It was the fucking wing...” Scott chanted, unbuckling his seatbelt, then grasping Logan from the lapels of his jacket.
“It was the fucking wing and it’s your entire fault! If you didn’t have the bright idea to land here, the jet would be alright and we’d be high up there, safe from the shit that waits for us out there!” Summers practically screamed. Logan raised his palm and slapped him on his cheek, hard enough to leave a mark. Scott fell silent, still clutching Logan’s jacket in a death grip, red glow of his concussive beam dancing behind the dark surface of his visor.
“Get a grip, asshole. It was just a wing. Could have been worse. Engines could have broken while we were in mid air,” Logan hissed and struggled loose from his hold.
“I’ll go and see if Jean and Marie are alright,” he said leaving Scott standing in the cockpit.

He found both women from the outside, staring at the broken down wing.
“You two okay?” He asked. Marie merely nodded, but Jean burst laughing out loud and took a few skipping steps on the ground before calming down and smoothing her slightly tousled hair.
“Please, don’t tell Scott that I did that,” she asked, her eyes full of remorse but the corners of her mouth still curling to a wide smile.
“I won’t tell if you don’t,” Logan promised.
“It’s just... I don’t know how much longer I could have kept going like that. Do you have any idea what is it like when you can hear every thought around you? When you know what other people are thinking before even they know it? What is it like when you know that there’s no way out of it, no way to get some distance to them?” Jean whispered, now completely serious.
“I have inkling about it. So it’s basically a good thing that...” Logan paused and they turned to look at Scott who walked down the ramp. His shoulders, usually wide, were no sagging. His whole posture seemed somehow bent and twisted; he looked like an old man, decades older of his true years. Crashing of the jet had crashed him as well. Logan cleared his throat.
“Like I was about to say, it’s basically a good thing that this happened here. There’s an airfield just around the corner, so it shouldn’t be a problem to fix this...”
“Shut up, Logan. We both know that it’s quite unlikely that an airfield in the middle of Nowhere, right next to Bumfuck is equipped to handle this kind of emergencies. As of starting today we won’t be flying anymore. Not with Blackbird. And I have my doubts about optional vehicles, at least aerial. For now we’re quite efficiently stuck out here,” Scott said, grasped Jean’s hand and lead her back in to the Blackbird.
“I’m going to pack up this bird with Jean! Go and see if there’s a suitable place for a home base anywhere near!” He cajoled and Marie and Logan could hear them opening up cabinets and jostling their cargo.

It sounded like the usual Scott Summers, fearless leader and their trusted pilot. They didn’t learn until much later how badly exactly the crash had damaged him and his view of their situation.

“I can’t believe this is really happening!” He turned to look at the girl on his side, his eyebrow raised questioningly. Marie was practically beaming from utter joy.
“We’re out! We’re walking out here! Nothing and nobody’s trying to attack us! We don’t have to kill anybody, and we don’t have to get back on that cursed jet never again!” Her mirth was contagious. It felt as if a heavy weight was suddenly lifted from his shoulders, and he was able to break out his first honest smile in weeks.
“Just don’t get your hopes up yet, kid. We need to eat. To do that we need to kill,” he reminded her.
“Oh, shush! You know what I mean. As far as it’s hunting for food, I’m okay with that,” Marie pssahhed, then stopped dead on her tracks, her gaze cast down to the side of the path they were walking.
“There are berries. Logan, there’s fresh berries here!”

They hadn’t exactly been starving, they had food with all the right nutrients, with just the right amount of calories and vitamins, but it was just dried rations they had managed to scavenge from the ruins of a store that sold outdoor gear. Blueberries, albeit slightly raw, tasted like heaven would probably taste.
“Should we save some for Scott and Jean?” Marie asked rosy hue on her cheeks and her lips dark purple from the juice of the berries.
“They’ll be coming through here when they’re ready. They can get some of these on their own,” Logan said popping a handful of berries in his mouth.
“But we better get going. We can always come back later.”
“But Logan...”
“Stop pouting, Marie. We have a home base to scout for. After we find something suitable you can eat as much berries as you like,” he grunted, now slightly annoyed. It was moments like this when it became painstakingly clear how young she truly was. Barely out of high school. Still capable of pouting among many other things. Was it really last night when those puckered lips had wrapped around his cock at the cramped locker usually reserved for cargo? He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. Was it really a good idea to start thinking about things like that? Was it really a good idea to think at all?

“...babies. They need lots of taking care of, so it’s really not a good idea to have one right now. What do you think?” Marie’s voice, especially the tone and the words she used wrenched him back from his musings, bringing forth a sickening clarity. Sun was too bright, berries too sweet and the goddamned birds were chirping loud enough to shatter his eardrums.
“A baby? You’re pregnant?” He managed to force out through his clenched jaw.
“No, silly! But Jean thought that she was. Last week. And she thought that it made her somehow a bad person when she found out that there was no baby and she was happy about it, and I said to her ack! ... What the hell are you doing, Logan?”

It was purely instinctual. He grasped a firm hold from the front of her shirt and hauled her violently against a nearby tree, dry twigs bristling and the bark of the tree chipping from the force of it.
“Don’t you ever... Fucking never scare me like that... Understood?” He hissed, his face hovering only inches apart from hers. Her eyes were wide as saucers and he could hear her heart, struggling against the bony cage it was trapped in, racing to deliver just the right mixture of hormones to prepare her to either fight or flee.
“Yes...?” She whispered, her lips trembling. She was agreeing, at least partially. There was a question hidden in that one syllable she had uttered. And now he could hear Scott and Jean approaching, bickering about this or that, generally raising enough ruckus to chase of anything and everything from several mile radius. He kissed Marie briefly, then forced a gentler tone to his voice.
“We’ll talk about this later. I’m... I’m not mad at you, kid. I... Later,” he stuttered and pulled her after him, back on to the path where they faced their teammates.

“You know, Logan... When I asked you two to scout the surroundings, this wasn’t quite what I had in mind,” Scott said smiling widely. It was quite obvious that packing up the Blackbird hadn’t been his top priority either. He looked more relaxed than they had seen him in weeks, and Jean was still all flustered and flushed up, demurely trying to pat down telltale strands of red hair that had escaped from her perfectly twisted bun.
“Berries! We were just eating blueberries!” Marie quickly interjected before Scott had the time to rib Logan some more. She wasn’t all too sure of how Logan would react to crude jokes about sexual preferences or even sex in general.
“Blueberries? Show me where! I have been starving for something fresh to eat!” Jean exclaimed, Logan’s tense posture and Marie’s uneasiness giving her all the guidance she needed.
“Come on, flyboy! Let’s pick some berries!” She decided and grasped Scott’s arm, dragging him away from the path with her.
“But what about the home base...”
“I’m sure that Marie and Logan can handle that, I think Logan is going to scout out that lumber mill he saw from the air. I’d much rather eat berries than sawdust, don’t you agree, Scott?”

With that said they both disappeared in to the thicket lining the path, leaving Marie and Logan alone again. For a while they just stood there, facing each other. She shuffled her feet nervously.
“Umm... Logan? About what happened earlier...”
“We’ll talk about it later, kid. It’s not something I’m going to discuss when there’s audience close by.”
“You’re not mad at me?” The insecure look on her face just about broke his heart. He pulled her in to his embrace, burying his face to the silky cascade of her hair.
“I’m not mad at you, Marie. And I’m sorry for what I did, there’s no excuse for that... I just got so fucking scared and worried...”

Forest cleared, revealing a wide open field. Ground was still bare and soil packed to a hard surface. Lumber mill stood at the middle of the clearing, still tall and proud. Logan tilted his head. The control booth of the mill looked promising. It was located on to the roof of the three story lumber mill. It would be a perfect place for a sentinel. That was, of course if they had one. As it was they’d have to make by with a live guard. They could take turns in the tower. Like mongooses, a thought flitted through his mind suddenly, forcing a smile on his face.

“What do you think? I think it looks pretty good. If we find a way to dig a moat around the whole fucking mill we should be able to fend off almost anything,” Marie said, excitement once again colouring her voice. He could smell it on her. She was already waiting for it eagerly. A home. A place to call her own, a place to defend if it ever came to that. She was nesting. And truth to be told... He had no objections.
“It’s good. And moat... That’s actually a great idea. We just need a bulldozer and an excavator to crack through this soil... Yeah. This should do. There’s plenty of room for all of us, and that mill doesn’t look too shabby... We probably have to look up those shingles and check those poles it stands on, but there’s a whole fucking forest full of wood so there should be no problems...” He didn’t realize that he was rambling until he noted Marie staring at him with her mouth gaping open.
“You’ve gotten a serious case of constructo-itis, haven’t you?” It was more of a notion than a question.
“Uh... Yeah?” He rubbed the back of his neck, slightly embarrassed.
“I think that I have gotten enough of the killing and maiming to last for a lifetime. Something constructive would probably serve as a nice counterweight,” he then explained.
“Okay. But could this project wait until we have actually checked the mill and found something to eat?” Marie asked. He shrugged his shoulders.
“I guess it has to. Darn. I knew there was a catch in this deal...” He grunted.

She couldn’t help admiring the way Logan seemed to melt in to his surroundings, much like a chameleon would do. He had spied a group of rabbits in the forest near the lumber mill. Marie had begged and whined until he had relented and let her come with him, but not before extracting her promise not to disturb the hunt. She had climbed on to a tall tree.
“Stay and watch. I teach you how to do this later,” Logan had grunted.

Now she could see the rabbits, jumping around and munching away dry hay that grew on the ground, but she could not see Logan. She knew he was somewhere down there, but nothing alerted her before he suddenly emerged from the bushes, grasping to his left and right, managing to catch four of the rabbits while rest of the small herd scattered to every possible direction.

“Why didn’t you just shot them?” She asked while climbing down to witness Logan snapping their necks, one after another.
“I’m not that good with firearms. Besides, I think it’s better that we save our bullets to when we actually need them...” Logan said, then thrust the limp carcasses to her.
“What am I supposed to do with these?” She asked puzzled.
“Carry them. You think four is enough? We’re going to get some more. And we’re still going to eat rations tonight. Those rabbits aren’t ready to cook yet.”
“Won’t they rot if we wait?” She asked.
“We’re not going to wait that long. Just long enough for the meat to soften up a bit.”

For a while later they returned to the lumber mill. Scott and Jean had already found their way there, too.
“Looks promising. Have you already checked it from the inside?” Scott asked. Logan shook his head.
“Decided to leave that to you.”
“Oh... Okay. Jean! Let’s go!”

“I don’t remember Scott being that dependant of Jean before...” Marie whispered when she was sure that Scott was out of hearing range. Logan shrugged his shoulders, slicing open the stomach of a rabbit he was processing.
“Give him some time. The plane crash shook him up a bit. He’ll come around eventually... You think you could dig up a deep hole?” He asked.
“Huh? Now?” She asked perturbed. Wet sound of tearing tissues when Logan dug in to the carcasses made her slightly nauseous.
“Yeah. We need to bury these innards. Don’t want half of the local wildlife population to come looking for scraps before we have some sort of fort raised. Scott fighting off a bear would probably look hilarious as hell. Jean stitching up his remains for the burial would probably look even funnier...”

She begun to dig the hole Logan had requested. The soil was hard and she had no tools but her own hands and a sturdy branch to use for the job. By the time she was finished Logan had already cleaned up all the six rabbits they had caught. Their innards lay on a heap on the ground at his feet. He was staring at the pile longingly.
“It’s a damn shame to waste that stuff. Heart and liver... They’d be perfect for a stew...” He huffed, then pushed the pile in to the hole with his foot.
“And how the hell do you know so much about these things?” Marie asked, kicking dirt over the gross pile that was already attracting flies.
“I was out on my own for a good while before we tagged along with Xavier’s freak-show. Picked up little this and that along the road.”

They finished cleaning up.
“Come on. We better go and see what Jean and Scott are up to. And we have to find a place to hang these critters. Can’t leave them out in the sun,” Logan said shaking the limp carcasses he was dangling from their ears.

It had taken them great deal of effort and several days worth of pure, back-breaking labour to check the structure of the lumber mill and decide what needed fixing, as well as creating a rudimentary defence system by mounting the radar of the Blackbird in to their watchtower. Their to-do list wasn’t as long as Logan had feared at first, but it would keep them occupied for several weeks before the mill could be seen as a safe fort to live in.

“Find your own goddamned swarm of mosquitoes, this one is mine...” Logan growled to Scott who sat next to him on to a fallen tree trunk.
“There’s so many of them in yours, I thought we could share,” Scott said wryly, stretching his legs and crossing his ankles.
“What ever... Are the girls back yet?” Logan asked. Scott shook his head.
“I wonder what’s taking them so long. Should we go after them?” He asked. Logan shook his head.
“Better stay out of their way. I once went with Marie when she needed a pencil. A fucking pencil! By the time she was ready to go home there was no store left in that mall she hadn’t visited...”

Earlier that day Marie and Jean had left under the pretence of scouting the nearby village for supplies. That was hours ago, but both of the men were reluctant to follow them. They all needed a brief respite from each other, but it wasn’t safe to wander around alone so they split their team in half every once and a while. This was supposed to be the girl’s day off. At first Logan had been tinkering with the machines of the lumber mill, trying to see if they could get them to work. Having proper tools to prepare the lumber they’d use to repair the old building would be essential for their success. The fact that they would need proper tools and spare parts to fix the machines was rapidly becoming a hindrance.

“I have been thinking...” Scott started swatting off a mosquito that tried to make a meal out of him.
“Do you think that it’s wise to dig in and settle down?” He asked. Logan shrugged.
“We haven’t seen any humans since we... Landed,” he said, carefully avoiding the c-word.
“But there’s every chance that they might find us. The risk of contamination rises every day we spend in one place. Hell, without a proper way of diagnosing we can’t know if the food we eat is safe. We don’t know if the water in that lake is safe to drink. We don’t know... We won’t know if the virus is airborne already,” Scott rambled on.
“And we won’t know the answer to any of those until it’s too late. And those are all things we would have to consider even if we kept moving around,” Logan pointed out.
“Yes, but...” Scott tried to interject.
“There are downsides to consider no matter what we do. By settling down we can ensure that we have at least familiar and safe base to get in to if something happens.”
“Yes, but...”
“Scooter, stop thinking too much. You’re going to blow a gasket if you keep mulling over these things too long. Relax, kick your feet up and have a beer.”
“I’d have a beer if we had any...” Scott muttered with somewhat gloomy expression on his face, then tried visibly to relax.
“It’s just that lately it has seemed as if I’m the only one still thinking about these things. It’s almost as if all of you are too busy playing home to care even when the whole fucking world is crashing down on us,” he finally voiced his real gripe over matters.
“The way I see it, there’s no reason to worry over things that are out of our hands. We’ll worry over safety of our diet when we have a lab where to test everything we put in our mouth. We’ll start worrying over possible human contact when that radar on the roof of the mill starts beeping.”
“That’s your plan?” Scott snorted; looking at Logan like the other man had lost his mind.
“If something isn’t broken, why fix it?” Logan asked, then tilted his head expectantly.
“I think the girls are back.”
“Really?”
“It’s either that or we’re about to get attacked by a horde of sick people wearing heavy make-up and lots of hairspray. Smells like girls found a beauty parlour while they were away...”

Logan’s assessment of the situation couldn’t have been more correct. Originally Marie and Jean had only intended to visit the village quickly to make sure that no people, sick or healthy lived there. While they were checking up houses and public buildings they had stumbled upon a supermarket. For a long while they had just stared at it. It was nothing grand, but considering the fact that before the plague crept over lands there had lived only couple of hundred people in the village the supermarket was huge. It wasn’t part of any bigger chain that they knew of and sold products that seemed to be produced locally, but they managed to find lots of useful items from there. They had been on their way back home when they had hit the jackpot. A small hair salon. Long days spent at hard labour had left their marks on both of them, so they decided to freshen up a bit, if not for else, to lighten their moods a bit. So what had started as a semi-vacation of sorts soon turned to girl’s night out, complete with a selection of fine liqueur they raided from a mandatory liquor store next door. To say that they were a bit tipsy and giddy was to say that the Pope might just be a bit catholic.

“But we hit a mother vein while we were out there!” Marie stuttered, drunk as a skunk, leaning against the doorjamb and trying her earnest not to fall down face first.
“There’s a hardware store...” She started, then hiccupped.
“But we didn’t know what you guys needed...” Equally drunken Jean slurred, then tried to wink at general direction of the two men who were just staring at them. Since it produced no reaction whatsoever she turned to look at Marie.
“I think we made a good impression... They’re speechless!” She whispered with conspiratory tone, loud enough for both men to hear.
“It’s the lipstick...” Marie started to giggle. Soon they were both slowly falling towards the floor, rolling in a fit of uncontrollable laughter.
“Don’t look at me. I’m a lousy drunk. At that point I’m usually getting angry enough to beat up a small army...” Logan said to Scott who looked at him like he was expecting some sort of an explanation for the women’s behaviour.
“We probably should get them to bed. We can go and check up that hardware store when they’re sober enough to defend this place,” he continued and hoisted still giggling Marie on his arms. Scott followed suit with Jean.

“Logan...” He was trying his best to untangle Marie’s grasping arms from around him. Resistance was futile. Marie was a headstrong girl when she was sober, a feature that got only more pronounced when she got drunk. He had no choice but to lay down with her to a thin mattress that served as their bed in the control booth that Logan had jokingly named as their watchtower.
“Logan, Logan, Logan...” Marie breathed out his name several times, then fell in to silence and just stared at him. For a long while they just laid there, on their sides, facing each other. It started to dawn on him that Marie was deadly serious, and not even close as drunk as she had first appeared to be.
“We need to talk,” she said. At that he stood up. Those words bode never well.
“Logan, we really need to talk,” Marie repeated sternly.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he said. But it was easier to talk about big things while standing.
“I seem to recall that you promised to explain something to me few days back...” Marie said and swallowed. He could smell how nervous she suddenly became.
“It was something about you and me, and... And babies,” she stuttered, but held her gaze locked together with his.
“Yeah...” He grunted and shifted his feet, turning to look at the scenery outside the wide windows rather than faced her questioning eyes. He didn’t know where to begin. He didn’t know how to phrase his thoughts without sounding like a complete asshole. Minutes ticked by.

“Logan?”
“It’s...” He tried, then drew a deep breath and turned to look at Marie. The girl who at some point of their merry trek had become something akin to a soul mate to him.
“Shit... I just don’t think it’s a good idea, or even right to start popping out babies in to this world. Not now. Maybe not ever. We don’t even know if it’s safe for us to breathe this air, let alone what would happen to a baby. I don’t want to risk losing anybody to Legacy anymore.” Finally he spoke out what had lain as a ton of lead over his chest for the past days. Now Marie knew where they stood. He could only hope that she understood his point of view on the subject. Many times in the past he had bent to her will, but this would be the one time he’d keep his mind. Anything else was negotiable, but when it came to his possible offspring... That was the one thing he couldn’t afford to lose so he’d rather skip the whole father-business altogether.

He waited for Marie to process what he had just said. He could hear Scott and Jean, talking with each other. Their “bedroom”, a room that had served as a small kitchen for the workers when the sawmill was still operational was located right under the watchtower, but the floorboards were thick enough to filter out everything else but all the highest noises, so he was unable to decipher what their conversation was about. And that really didn’t even matter. They could have been talking about pink elephants screwing over green rats for all he cared. Right now the only thing he was interested was Marie’s opinion about his thoughts, and her reaction to the revelation that if she stayed with him she most likely never would experience motherhood.

“That’s... That’s an interesting point of view...” Marie started. Cold sweat rose over Logan’s forehead. An interesting point of view? What the hell was that supposed to mean?
“For the whole time I have been worried that you’re going to think that I’m selfish if I tell you that I don’t want to have children. At least not yet,” she continued, new kind of surety bleeding in to her voice.
“Of course I often thought about it, but that was before the war. Before the Legacy. Even then I had my doubts. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to make a mutant baby in to a world that wanted all the mutants to be gone. I guess...” She paused for a while, waiting until Logan was looking at her rather than admiring the setting sun behind the window.
“I guess I decided back then already that I wouldn’t even want to have a baby if the world didn’t suddenly somehow turned to a place where we are tolerated.”

Logan didn’t know what to say.
“I think it would be okay to start breathing again. Your lips are starting to turn blue,” Marie said. He let out the breath he had been holding, not even knowing how long he had stood there not breathing and drew in a ragged breath of air, like a man who had been just saved from drowning.
“So... We’re okay now?” He asked, not only wanting, but needing the confirmation.
“We’re okay. I’m glad that we got this over with. I was... I was really worried... I... I was afraid that you’d think of me as some sort of freak...” Marie really tried, tried to speak, but her voice broke down to give way to relieved sobs.
“I don’t think you’re a freak, kid...” Logan huffed and sat down next to her, wrapping his arm around her shoulders and urging her to lean on to him.
“I may be drunk now, just a little...” She cried and buried her face against his side.
“But I think I’d like a lot if we took our clothes off and you’d hold me...”
“Just hold you?” He asked. She nodded, wiping her tear and make-up stained face with her palms.
“I can do that. But first we have to get out of these clothes,” he promised and started undressing her gently.

He laid light kisses to every exposed area of her skin until she lay completely nude in front of him. He then proceeded to take off his own clothes and lay next to her, pulling her flush against his frame.

“We restocked contraceptives with Jean. There weren’t that many packages in that drugstore and I’m not sure if the brand I got was right, but Jean said it doesn’t really matter what brand it is as long as I’m not getting any side-effects,” Marie sniffled.
“Uh-huh...”
“What if there are side-effects? What if I get all fat and angry and moody? Jean said that bleeding in the brain is possible if my body doesn’t like these new pills, but that she doesn’t believe that it’ll happen...”
“You could stop taking the pills. Condom is not 100% sure, but almost as good as the pills and with no side-effects,” Logan said. He wasn’t completely at ease talking about these things, but they had to be discussed.
“In fact, we shouldn’t count on anything that we can’t make for ourselves. One morning we’re going to wake up to a world where there are no big factories, no malls or even little grocery stores. And everything that comes out of them is gone as well.”
“But... But condoms?”
“You can make those from the animal gut. It just has to be treated with certain herbs and...”
“Can we stop talking? I think I’m going to be sick and I know I’m going to be sick soon if I start thinking why it is exactly that you know how to make condoms from animal guts...”
“I was bored one day. Looked it up from the internet.”
“Good night, Logan.”

Somewhere beneath them Jean suddenly screamed. Marie sat up. Logan grasped her elbow and pulled her back in to his embrace.
“Get back here.”
“But Jean...”
“Is obviously busy with Scott.”
“Oh...”

Next morning found them from a tangled heap of limbs on the cold floor. Either Marie or Logan was what one could call a peaceful dreamer.
“Oww...” Marie groaned, sitting up gingerly.
“Hangover?” Logan asked, climbing on to his feet and reaching for his clothes.
“No... But my back is killing me. I slept on it for the whole night, and hard wood isn’t the best possible mattress...” She whined and stretched her shoulders, trying to get comfortable enough so she could get dressed.
“We have to find a better place to sleep. But that has to wait. We’re going to check up that hardware store you talked about last night.”
“We?” Marie asked.
“I’m going with Scott. It’s up to you and Jean to hold the fort.”
“Okay.”

On his way out Logan saw Jean. She stumbled down a flight of stairs, just narrowly managing to avoid breaking her neck.
“Jean! Shit... Jean, are you okay?” He shouted and hurried after her. The woman was sitting at the bottom of the stairs, rubbing her forehead.
“I’m such a klutz sometimes, Logan. I’m alright...” Jean chuckled weakly. The bridge of her nose had a deep gash, and there was a large bruise adorning her forehead.
“Doctor, heal thy self... Better yet, tell me where the first-aid kit is hidden. I’ll go and get it for you.”
“It’s alright, Logan. No need to make such a fuss about this. I already called Scott... Oh, hi honey! Did you bring the band-aid?” Jean waved at Scott who hurried to them, striding down the steps two at time.
“Jesus, Jean! You really are bleeding; let me take a look at it...” He huffed, then glanced at Logan quickly.
“I’ll come with you as soon as we get this sorted out,” he promised, effectively dismissing Logan after those words, his whole attention turned to Jean.

He walked out to greet the rising sun, debating internally if all the commotion he had faced when getting up was a good reason to smoke his last cigar. It was well hidden, sealed in to a steel tube and sown inside of his jacket’s inner lining. Perhaps the last Cuban he’d see, ever. He hadn’t yet decided when the door behind him opened and Scott walked out, slightly nauseated look on his face.
“Ready to go?” Logan asked. Scott nodded.
“Is Jean okay?” Again Scott nodded.
“You need to puke?” This time Scott shook his head.
“She... She told me what happened. She had been on her way down here, in a hurry because she thought that she heard a noise from the outside... Her foot caught to something and she... She...” Scott stuttered, then fell in to silence. For a long while they walked in the woods, side by side. swatting mosquitoes and Logan keeping up the pretence that there actually was good and constructive conversation going on while he was the one doing all the talking, blabbering a mile in a minute about this and that, trying to find a topic that would take Scott’s mind off from what happened.

“She could have died.” There. One simple phrase cut trough Logan’s ramblings. Scott had stopped walking, his face ashen and his eyes staring in to nothing.
“She could have died and there’s nothing we can do about it.”
“She’s alive. We’re all alive. We can do something. We can try to make sure that we all stay alive,” Logan said and nudged Scott’s shoulder, trying to jostle the other man out of the trance-like state he had fallen. When it happened, it happened so fast that Scott managed to surprise Logan.

Suddenly his hands were full of kicking, screaming and biting Scott who tried to grasp his throat.
“She could have died! She could have died and that’s all your fault! You made us land here! You made us stay in that death-trap you have the guts to call a fort! If any of us dies in here, I’ll kill you!” Scott screamed and spat on his face, his skin reddening from exertion and sheer rage until Logan was worried that the former team leader would pop an artery.
“For fuck’s sake, Scooter! The jet broke down! Get over it already!”
“I won’t get over it! You put us in danger! We could all get killed at any minute! We all...”
“Shit.” Logan tuned out Scott’s screaming and focused on containing his grasping hands and flailing feet. It wasn’t working very well. Back in their days as teacher and instructor Scott had been a considerable adversary in wrestling.
“Sorry about this, Scooter...” Logan grunted and head butted his raging teammate, fully expecting him to drop from the first hit. That didn’t happen, but suddenly Scott fell silent and wrenched away from him, his hands rising to cover his face.

“You fucking idiot! You broke my visor! Happy now?” Scott hissed, crouching on the ground, his eyes pinched tightly shut and cracked pieces of his visor hanging from his clenched fist.
“I’m not happy about it. But I’m sure we can find a way to fix it...”
“Fix it? Fix it? Unless you happen to know where we can find just the right kind of rubies, and the equipment to turn them in to a lens there’s no fixing it! I’m fucking blind!”
“Well, excuse me for trying to defend myself!” Logan huffed silently wondering how long it would take before Scott would decide that the war and the following apocalypse complete with the legacy was also his entire fault. And what was Scott doing now? Was he really crying?

“I’m sorry... I’m sorry... I’m so sorry...”
“Come on, Scoo... Scott. I’m sure we’ll find a way to fix that visor. Or we could find something to replace it with,” he tried to console him clumsily. With Marie it was easier. Whenever she broke down he could just hold her and let her pick up the pieces by herself.
“Come on. We better get going. Girls are going to start to wonder where we are if we sit here much longer,” he urged Scott who stood up and straightened his back. Wiped his face to the sleeve of his jacket and drew a deep breath.
“Let’s go and get those tools we came to look for,” he said with a stern voice, and Logan couldn’t help smiling. That tone belonged to the Scott Summers he knew. Anal asshole, eternal pain in the ass and an irreplaceable member of their little team.

“Get your paws off!”
“I was just trying to help...”
“I’m blind, not invalid! I was blind for the better part of my teens!”
“Okay, okay. There’s no need to shout. I’m not deaf, you know.”
“Shit... Just tell me what we’re facing. I’ll ask for help if I need it.”

Logan huffed and proceeded to explain their surroundings to Scott, who in fact was doing surprisingly well. It couldn’t have been easy to walk through a foreign forest with your eyes closed.

“Wait, wait... Where are we going?” Scott asked, stopping dead on his tracks.
“Back home. I’m going to drop you off and go and get those tools Marie told us earlier.”
“That’s what I thought. And it’s not going to happen. You’re not going in there alone, Logan. We agreed on this...”
“We agreed to move only as a team when you weren’t blind as a bat and as useless as balls of the Pope.”
“Fuck you, beast-boy. I can still put you down with little effort. All I have to do is to blink.”
“Well, if you put it that way...” Logan said, then lunged towards Scott who avoided his sudden attack and countered it by knocking him down and falling on top of him, their faces only inches apart. And there it was again, that horrendous, pulsating light, swirling underneath his eyelids, small tendrils of it leaking through the slits until it looked like Scott was crying blood.

“Like I said, I’m blind, not invalid. And as fun as this has been, don’t you think we should get going before the girls start to worry?” Scott whispered, his face so close that Logan could actually feel his lips whispering over his. It clashed with him on an instinctual level, low rumble rising from deep inside of him. Scott was deliberately taunting him, trying to appear as the dominant member of their miniscule scouting party. With mighty effort Logan managed to tamp down his basic urge to skewer Scott.
“Back the fuck off, Summers. Up there on the sky you were the one calling the shots. Down here... You’re on my territory. I have forgotten more about survival than you will ever learn. So get the fuck away from me before I forget that we’re on a same team!” He managed to growl, then grabbed the other man and pushed with all he got forcing Scott to move, and rolled back on his feet. And all of a sudden Scott started to laugh.

For a long while Summers just rolled on the ground, laughing and gasping for breath. It was contagious. Soon Logan was laughing as well. He grasped Scott’s arm and helped him to stand up.
“Why the hell are we laughing, anyway?” He managed to ask.
“It just occurred to me... Back home everybody used to say that you were a loose cannon... What would they say about us now?” Scott giggled. There was no sign of his earlier, rather threatening attitude. It was as if nothing had happened. Again they were just two buddies, trekking through this fucking forest to get some parts to that fucking lumber mill. And truth to be told, it scared the shit out of Logan. He knew something about stress. He knew something about extended periods of stress and what it did to a person. He knew that from the first-hand experience. Scott was broadcasting all the classic signs of a proper, nuclear-meltdown-brainfart loud and clear on all the channels, and there was nothing anyone in their small group could do but to duck and cover when it happened.

Earlier Logan hadn’t really thought about it, but now, as they approached the village it struck him like a ton of bricks.
“Scott?”
“Yeah?”
“Does it strike as odd to you that this whole fucking place just sat here, completely deserted?”
“Huh?”
“Just think about it. Think of all the cities we have seen this far. They were filled with corpses and sick people.”
“So?”
“This place is empty.”
“Oh...”
“Yeah. Isn’t that a bit strange?”
“I don’t know. Population wasn’t so big to begin with; maybe they all just left before all this?” Scott proposed, stumbled slightly but regained his balance before he fell.
“You know as well as I do how stupid that sounds. People don’t do that. They don’t just decide to leave. Besides, all the cars, motorcycles, hell, even bicycles are still here. If you have a car and you’re planning to take a hike, wouldn’t you drive rather than walk?”
“We can talk about it when we get back home. I might have a theory about what’s happened in here,” Scott muttered.
“In the mean time I’d appreciate if you kept your mouth shut. I can’t hear where I’m going if you keep talking.”
“So, you’re a bat now?”
“No. But if there’s twigs rustling at my feet I know that I’m not on the path anymore. So shut up already!”
“...Or we could take the more traditional approach. You’d grab my elbow. I’d be your eyes and we could talk about this theory of yours,” Logan proposed.
“Fine. Just don’t coddle me! I can do this on my own, you know...” Scott grumbled.
“Sure you can. Just don’t step on that ditch over there; broken bones are something we can’t afford right now.”
“What ditch?”
“See what I mean?”
“No. I’m blind.”
“Now you’re getting the hang of it. I have eyes, you got brains. We both better start using what we got...”

“Poor jokes aside, this sucks. If something really happens, if we get attacked... I’m useless,” Scott huffed.
“What do you mean?” Logan asked.
“I can’t risk an unregulated blast. At best I’ll blow the attackers to bits and pieces, at worst I burn out my eyes.”
“Yeah. I can see why that sucks ass. Are you sure that there’s no spare visor tucked in to somewhere in the Blackbird?” Logan asked. Scott shook his head.
“Not that I know of. I had spares when we left the mansion, but that was well over year ago. Visors are surprisingly fragile. I cracked one pair because of the turbulence...”
“Huh?”
“I hit my head when the jet swayed. Then there was that one time when those guys tried to swipe the Blackbird...”
“Oh, yeah. I remember that. One of them had a baseball bat, right?”
“Right...”

They managed to get in to the hardware store and back to the lumber mill relatively unscathed. Their trip had soon proved to be successful, and Logan was already itching to get his hands on the machines of the old mill. That, however, had to wait. They had much more pressing matters to deal first.

“Scott! What happened?” Jean cried, hurrying to greet them as they stepped in to the mill, Logan leading Scott from the elbow.
“Nothing. I walked on to a branch and my visor snapped,” Scott said nonchalantly. Jean’s eyes darted between the two men quickly. Logan knew that she knew that Scott was lying. There was no hiding things from a telepath. But it looked like Jean was willing to let it slide. She grasped Scott’s hand and led him in, then helped him to sit down.
“It’s okay, Jean. I made it through back when I was just a kid. How hard can it be now?” Scott was trying to assure her.

“Where’s Marie?” Logan asked. He couldn’t smell her scent in the air, meaning that she must have been away from Jean for quite some time already.
“She went fishing for few hours ago. We found some fishing rods from that office and we thought it would be nice to eat something else than rabbit for a change,” Jean explained, fiddling with the broken visor Scott had handed to her.
“Fuck this. What part of moving in group only didn’t you guys understand?” Logan growled. Jean turned to look at him, puzzled look on her face.
“The lake is basically on the other side of that wall. I’d hear if anything happened,” she pointed out.
“What ever. I’ll go and see if she’s okay.”

The lumber mill was built near the lake. Only a narrow strip of rocky ground separated the two, but Logan was worried. It was irrational, Marie could take care of herself better than well, and if anything would have happened, Jean would have heard it.

Marie was sitting on a large rock, a small basket filled with fish resting at her feet. Fishing rod was resting little higher on the shore. She wasn’t fishing anymore, just sitting and soaking her feet in the water.

“Hi. Caught anything good?” He asked, sitting next to Marie and reaching the basket.
“It’s fish. Does it really matter what kind of fish it is?” She asked somewhat sullenly.
“I guess not. What’s bugging you?” He asked.
“Nothing... I just... I talked with Jean and...”
“And?”
“Nothing. It’s kind of personal. I promised her not to tell,” Marie said, then finally turned to look at him.
“So, did you guys find anything useful?” She quickly changed the subject. Logan knew he’d eventually hear what it was that was bothering her, so he let it slide.
“The whole fucking store would have been useful. Decided to take just few toolboxes this time. We have to go back later. Scott thought that he might be able to repair the Blackbird with what we found from there.”
“Really?” That picked up her interest.
“Well, not Scott. I’d have to do the actual work, but he was sure that he could talk me through it.”
“”Huh? Scott was tinkering with the jet and cars all the time when we lived at Xavier. What’s stopping him from getting his hands dirty now?” Marie asked puzzled.
“I broke his visor.”
“What?”
“It was an accident. I was aiming at his forehead, but he ducked and...”
“Do I even want to know what happened?”
“You have to know. Scott’s... He’s not okay. And I think even Jean knows that. He’s too stressed out about all that’s happened. We should be careful with him.”

Marie turned to stare at the pristine surface of the lake again. Logan could sense that there was something she really wanted to say, but instead she sat there in silence. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders.
“I’m not saying that we should be afraid of him. Worried? Definitely. We have to keep our eyes on him. I’m not sure what’ll happen. Maybe he gets it out of his system, maybe not,” he said, trying to assure the girl that there was no real danger involved. He couldn’t imagine Scott actually hurting any member of his team. That was not something Scott Summers would do, no matter what.
“Are you sure about that?” Marie asked.
“I’m sure. I’m more worried that he might hurt himself.”
“Well, if you say so...”
“Yeah, I say so. Come on, we better get back. I’m starving, and I’m sure that Jean and Scott could use something to eat, too,” Logan wrapped up their conversation and stood up, picking up the basket. He was about to help Marie up as well when a distant scream made them both freeze.

“What was that?” Marie asked.
“I don’t know. We better hurry.”

Jean and Scott were waiting for them at the doorstep of the mill.
“Did you guys hear that?” Scott asked.
“Yeah. It sounded like it came from the village,” Logan said.
“We should go and check it out,” Scott said.
“You’re going to stay with Jean. We’re going to check it out.”
“But...”
“Shut up, Scott. Right now you’re no use in battle. Try and see if you can get that visor fixed,” Logan quipped, gave the basket with fish to Jean and took running towards the small path that he had earlier used with Scott to reach the village. Another scream, this time louder echoed through the forest.
“Turn on your skin, kid, this might get ugly!” He shouted to Marie who was running after him.

“Do you believe in ghosts?” Marie whispered.
“I haven’t before, but it’s beginning to feel like a good idea to revise my beliefs...” Logan huffed.
“This is creepy,” Marie muttered, trying to act bravely while standing behind his back and flinching every time he moved or slight breeze rustled debris on the ground.
“Tell me about it. I can’t smell a fucking thing. Those screams we heard earlier... I was expecting to find the screamer torn in pieces, but I can smell only us.”

They had searched the whole village with no results. Marie had seen something to move in the shadows behind the grocery store but whatever it had been it was as good as gone now. It had left no traces and Logan was convinced that her imagination had just played a dirty trick on her. Either that or the village was haunted. He rather chose to believe to the former option than the latter.

“We haven’t checked the church yet,” Marie reminded him when he was about to turn back.
“Well, it can’t hurt to look. But when I was here with Scooter we checked it and the doors were locked,” he said. They approached the small building slowly. There was every possibility that the screamer, whatever it had been, was hiding behind the sturdy doors.
“We are morons,” Logan snorted, reaching for the door handle.
“Speak for yourself, mister... Why?” Marie asked, then held her breath as he ever so carefully nudged the handle. It refused to budge.
“We should get back to Jean and Scott. We can optimize the search area of the radar. It’ll pick up anything and everything from ten mile radius. If those screams were real and the screamer is still around we will find it easier that way.”
“That’s a good idea. But while we’re here, do we have time to go shopping?” Marie asked somewhat relieved.
“Shopping?” Logan asked.
“Well, it’s nice to eat roasted food every once and a while, but I saw a portable stove in the grocery store when I was here with Jean. We tried to take it with us, but the gas tank was too heavy to lift for us.”
“And she didn’t use her powers to levitate it because?”
“Well, we were a bit tipsy and everything...”
“Being a bit tipsy and being utterly drunk as a skunk are two different conditions, kid.”
“Come on! Be a man!”
“I am. It doesn’t involve hauling a huge-ass gas tanks through a fucking forest so that you could cook something because you’re bored of eating roasted food.”
“You’re a wuss.”
“Yeah. And wise enough to come back later and find some sort of cart so I can drag your loot home. Right now we have more important things to do. We have to check out that screamer. At best it’s just some fucking weird bird. At worst... Who the hell knows what it is...”

He tried to remember when it had happened. When exactly had Marie earned the right to get on his nerves and to live and tell the tale of it? He couldn’t remember. Actually it was impossible to imagine her in any other way. Perhaps it had all started in his camper. The one and only vehicle he remembered with some degree of fondness. It had been a piece of shit. Marie had called him for it. At the time he had let it slide. She had been starving. She would have died had he thrown her on to the road. And did it really matter when it had happened? She had a permanent get out of jail free –card which she used surprisingly sparsely.

They were halfway through the forest when the scream pierced the air again. Only now it wounded like it came from the lumber mill.
“Shit! It crept around us!” Logan bolted forward, tripping over a thick root and landing face first on to the narrow path.
“And now you decide to take a nap? Hurry up! I don’t want to miss all the action!” Marie hollered sprinting past him in her haste to reach the screamer. Logan rose on his feet and shook off bits of moss and dry leaves, his face turning to a grimace.
“Fuck... Kid! Wait up! You don’t know what we’re dealing with!”

She was faster than him, but he knew for a fact that he won her in endurance. If she kept her pace up, she’d be no use in battle when she reached the lumber mill. He had tried to warn her before. One day her reckless nature would get her in to serious trouble. He tried to keep up steady pace, but then the scream echoed again and all his plans of careful and well planned approach flew to hell. This time he could identify the screamer. It was Marie.

He could see the hulking figure of the lumber mill from amidst the trees. Marie was screaming again, calling him, hollering his name from the top of her lungs. Another voice soon joined to those screams. Scott. And Scott wasn’t calling him. He could only barely distinguish the words.

“Jean! Oh, God.... Jean!”

The sight that greeted Logan when he emerged from the woods stopped him dead on his tracks. There was a lump on the ground. Red lump. The same colour as Jean’s shirt –lump. That lump wasn’t moving, no matter how harshly Scott was poking it. That lump wasn’t moving no matter how loud Marie cried and pleaded. Jean wasn’t moving.

He stared at the woman lying in front of him. Birds were chirping. Sun was still shining, low on the horizon. She wasn’t dead. Her chest was moving in the rhythm of her shallow breathing. She wasn’t dead yet.

Marie was in the mill, helping Scott to bed. Summers was devastated, Marie was in not much better shape, but she could still function. And Jean wasn’t dead yet, but they had no idea of what was wrong with her. Scott hadn’t been able to tell them what had happened. He was in shock. He had managed to utter few words, something about Jean leaving the mill, going out to check the source of the screams.

“Come on, Jeannie... You’re a tough chick. Don’t you dare to die on me now...” He whispered, sat next to her and hauled her on to his arms. She was cold to the touch. He could hear her heart beating. It was sluggish, as if the small muscle had to struggle to perform the duty assigned to it.
“If you die, there’s no telling of what will happen to Scott,” he whispered. No reaction.
“Wake up, Jeannie. We need you. Scott needs you. Wake the fuck up!”

For the first time in his life he regretted not having a more thorough understanding of human anatomy and how it all worked. He knew just enough to take a life, but not enough to preserve it. Tears stung in his eyes, but he refused to cry. Jean wouldn’t die. She couldn’t die.
“You’re not fucking allowed to die! You hear me, Jeannie? You can’t die because I say so! I outrank you, so what I say goes!”

There were no marks on her, aside of bruises around her eyes and the scrape on the bridge of her nose from her tumble on the stairs.
“I don’t fucking care if you hit your head too hard! That’s not good enough reason to die!”

Her hair and clothes were in immaculate order, no signs of any kind of struggle aside of scraped knee from when she fall. He could only hold her and hope for the best. There was nothing they could do. Jean was the only one with skills and knowledge to handle situations like this.
“Fine. Die. See if I care,” he huffed and gave Jean’s limp body a decent shove, letting her fall back on to the ground, then hurriedly snatched her back, horrified of his own reaction.
“Sorry about that, Jeannie... I just... I don’t want you to die. I... I don’t know what the fuck I will do with Scott if you die on me now. He’s... He’s falling to pieces, and I’m no shrink. I need you...”

He clutched the redheaded doctor tighter against his chest and rocked back and forth, trying to rein his emotions before they got the better of him. He wasn’t going to cry. That part was reserved to Scott. He was just the guy who’d dig the grave once Jean kicked the bucket.
“Come on, doc... You can’t die... There’s nothing wrong with you!”

He didn’t realize that he was crying, not before he could smell Marie’s scent and feel her arms wrapping around him from behind. She was holding both of them, her hands covering his as he held Jean. He buried his face against Jean’s chest. Her heart was still beating. She was still alive.
“She can’t die...”
“She won’t,” he could hear Marie whispering, her warm breath tickling his earlobe. She was warm against his back, but Jean was so cold against his chest.
“I don’t want her to die...”
“She won’t.”

Suddenly the tone of Marie’s voice and her surety of Jean’s survival made him angry. How the hell would she know if Jean lived or died? He wrenched violently backwards, throwing the girl off from his back.
“Logan!”
“How would you know if she dies or not?” He barked, turning around to face her, dragging Jean with him.
“Because she’s in my head! She’s in my head, telling me that she won’t die!” Marie shouted, rubbing her hurt behind carefully.
“Like shit she is... You’re just telling me that to...”
“Logan, calm down... I will be just fine... Just give me a minute...” That was Jean. He turned to look at the woman on his arms. Her eyes opened slowly and she drew a deep breath.
“Jeannie!” The best he could do was to hold her even tighter, to the point that he was scared of crushing her, but he was unable to let go of her.
“Logan... Eventually you have to let me breathe...”

“Jesus, Jeannie. Don’t ever scare us like that,” he muttered, letting go of the doctor so she could sit up. She sat up slowly, rubbing her face tiredly and shook her head. Then, all of a sudden, she froze. Her eyes scanned their surroundings frantically, finally settling on to Marie.
“Are you alright?” She asked.

For Logan there was something quite fundamentally wrong with that question. Jean had been the one at Death’s doorstep, and now she was worried over Marie? Both women dismissed him.
“I’m fine... I guess... What was that?” Marie asked confused. Jean stood up slowly.
“You should know better than to grab my bare skin, Jean,” Marie said.
“And I know. I’m sorry for what I did... I felt like I had no other choice,” Jean apologized.
“Wait... You touched Marie?” Logan asked.
“I had to. I needed to get away from Sc... I needed to get away from my head, at least momentarily. I’m sorry for that, Marie. I truly am. But it’s better now,” Jean said and extended her hand to Marie who took it. Jean helped her up and together they limped in to the lumber mill, leaving flabbergasted Logan sitting alone on the ground.

“I think I deserve an explanation,” he grunted, stepping in to their bedroom. Marie was rearranging a small cupboard she had found earlier, filling it with clothes and various knickknacks. Upon hearing his words she stopped and sat on to the mattress.
“Does this have anything to do with our earlier chat about Jean?” He asked. Marie didn’t answer.
“Come on, kid. If there’s a problem... If there’s something really wrong, I’d like to know about it before somebody fucking dies! There’s no secret that would be worth anybody’s life!” He tried to reason with the girl. She shook her head.
“I can’t tell. I promised. Jean made me to promise her not to tell anybody,” she whispered.
“This isn’t some fucking soap opera, kid! I thought Jean was going to die! Luckily she didn’t hold on to you any longer or she’d be dead!”
“If you need to know what’s going on, go ask Jean! It’s between her and Scott anyway!” Marie shouted and turned her back on him, going back to her earlier task of sorting out their possessions.
“Maybe I should ask her...” Logan growled, turned around and stormed out.

For a while he tried to tinker with the grand saw, but bolts and screws weren’t cooperating with him. Annoyed he threw the wrench in to corner where it landed with a loud clatter. Noise echoed in the hall around him.

Up until now there had been no secrets. The real cloak and dagger games had begun only after the jet crashed. He had tried to hide Scott’s breakdown from Marie and Jean. They had tried to hide Scott’s breakdown from him. And what really had happened to Jean this morning? Had she simply stumbled down the stairs? She wasn’t clumsy. And what the fuck was the screamer that had drawn him away from Jean and Scott today? Why was this place so deserted? Why had Scott given up so easily and landed here? And why the hell Marie wasn’t able to trust him enough to tell what the fuck was going on?

As it was, he wouldn’t get the answers he was looking for unless he grilled Jean. And that didn’t feel like the right thing to do. But did he really have any options?

He walked slowly to the door and pressed his ear against it. He could hear two hearts. One of them beating slowly, sluggishly. Asleep. Another beating with such fervor that he had to wonder what was wrong. He knocked on the door silently, and now he could hear bedclothes rustling. Soft footsteps. Most likely Jean. He waited, the door cracked partially open and Jean’s face appeared to the crack.
“We need to talk,” he whispered. Jean turned to look somewhere in to the room, then nodded and pushed the door open, flinching when the hinges cringed. She slipped out and pushed the door closed carefully.
“Outside,” she whispered. Logan followed her.

Once outside Jean seemed to relax somewhat. They sat on to the ground.
“What’s going on?” Logan asked. Jean shrugged her shoulders.
“It’s complicated, Logan...” She started.
“Bullshit. Start talking, doc,” Logan interjected.
“It’s about Scott. He’s having some difficulties. First the Blackbird crashed, then his visor broke, and he’s... He’s feeling left out. He’s feeling like we don’t need him anymore...”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Logan huffed.
“He thinks that we’re only looking for a proper excuse to get rid of him. And lately... Lately his thoughts have been so ugly and his mood has been shifting constantly... I have been trying to find a way to break our psychic bond because truth to be told he’s going insane and that’s something I do not wish to witness as intimately as the bond allows me... This morning he found out what I was doing. I was walking down the stairs, when suddenly I felt him at the back of my mind...”
“He pushed you.” That wasn’t a question. Logan felt a sudden bout of rage coursing through his veins, then it settled and ebbed to something akin of sorrow.
“I’m not sure. It felt like a shove. Then I thought that I must have imagined it. Then you guys left and...”
“That fucking screamer. Without it we could have settled this all...” Logan growled. Jean actually blushed.
“That... That was me. You heard a projection of my emotions. You didn’t know what caused it, so your minds chose the most logical point of origin for it.”
“Fucking unbelievable. Had I known about this, I wouldn’t have proposed landing here,” Logan huffed leaning his forearms to his knees, his head hanging low.
“But that’s just it. We were all so excited about the possibility to breathe and eat anything that wasn’t canned or recycled. How could have we know that this would happen?” Jean asked. Logan grit his teeth.
“I should have known, Jeannie. I know Scott. I should have known better than to ask him to land. He likes nothing more than to carry the fucking responsibility and I took it away from him.”
“That’s bull...” Jean started, then they both froze, their heads cocked. A door slammed inside. The door to Jean and Scott’s room. Scott was awake.
“He better not find out about our little chat...” Logan whispered. Jean wrinkled her brow, look of determination crossing her face.
“He won’t... I locked it away... I think...” She hissed, then quickly straightened her posture when Scott stepped behind them.

“Doesn’t anybody sleep at night anymore?” Scott asked, sliding between Logan and Jean on to the ground, crossing his long legs.
“Wasn’t tired. Came to watch the sun set,” Logan said. Scott turned his face towards Jean, look of worry flashing over his features briefly.
“And you? Couldn’t sleep either? Or does your head still hurt?” He asked. The tone of his voice was just a tad bit too right. Just a tad bit too clinical. Jean shook her head, then cleared her throat.
“Oh, it’s nothing. I just couldn’t sleep either. I thought that some fresh air would help,” she then produced a verbal answer. Scott rubbed the thick layer of bandages that covered his eyes and crinkled the bridge of his nose.
“It itches... If you guys aren’t tired, maybe we could try to fix my visor?” He asked.
“I guess we could. You think it would hold if we just glued it together? I got some extra strong two-component glue from the hardware store,” Logan proposed. Scott turned to ‘look’ at him.
“It couldn’t hurt to try. We just have to make sure that the lenses are intact before we try it out. I’d hate to ruin the whole thing just because of some microscopic flaw in the gem.”
“I’ll go and get the glue. It’s in our room,” Logan said and stood up, giving Jean a reassuring nudge to her shoulder. Then, right before he stepped in to the mill he turned around.
“Uh... Scott? I hate to ask you this, but...” He started, trying to sound reluctant.
“Go ahead,” Scott urged him to continue.
“Since you’re blind and all... Could you watch the radar tomorrow? You probably have sharper ears than both of the girls together, you’d probably hear the signal long before them.” For a moment Scott seemed to mull over his request, then nodded.
“I can do that. Are we expecting company?”
“I don’t know, but it’s better to be safe and sure. We have been slacking off with guard duty lately...”

Relieved look on Jean’s face told Logan that it probably had been his best idea for a long time.

Scott safely tucked in to the guard tower and armed with a walkie-talkie and with strict orders to contact the rest of the team if he heard as much as a fart from the radar they took off. Logan didn’t know if the distance would help in hiding what they were doing from Scott, but at least it gave them the false sense of security.

“I still think that one of us should have stayed with Scott...” Marie grumbled.
“Yeah, you and me both, kid. But that’s just not an option right now,” Logan said, then turned to look at Jean.
“Or is it, doc?” He asked. Jean shook her head.
“I’m going to cut our bond for good. Scott will notice it. There’s no way of telling how he will react. It’s better to get some distance, just to be sure that he won’t harm any of us before he realizes that this is for the best,” Jean explained once more.

They had hatched their plan over breakfast. Scott had still been sleeping. The basic idea was simple. They’d get some distance to Scott and Jean would cut the cord that tied her together with Scott on psychic level. It would prevent Scott from getting in to her head, it would prevent her from wandering accidentally in to Scott’s head, all in all it would make things much simpler. But the catch was that she’d have to keep it as a secret from Scott until she was good and ready, absolutely sure that she’d manage to do it for the first try.

“And why are we all so sure that Scott would object if he knew about this?” Marie asked. Logan and Jean traded an uneasy glance.
“Kid...” Logan started, then fell in to silence, seemingly unable to continue.
“Scott will see this as a betrayal,” Jean said. Marie’s forehead crinkled in confusion.
“Why would he think like that if we explained it to him why it has to be done? From what I have understood from what you guys have told me, he pretty much understands that he’s losing his mind.” Logan opened his mouth, looking as if he was going to provide an explanation, then fell in to silence again, kicking small twigs and pebbles on his path.
“Logan?” Jean asked. Logan shrugged.
“You haven’t told her?” Jean asked.
“Didn’t seem that important. Didn’t feel like something I should share... Fuck!”
“Can I tell her?” Jean asked. Logan stopped and drew a deep breath.
“We fucked. Jeannie and me. Right before I left back to Canada. Scott found out,” he blurted out. It was Marie’s turn to stop and just stare at them.

“Classy, Logan, real classy. You couldn’t come up with a nicer way to say it?” Jean admonished him. Marie was kneeling on the ground, looking all as if she was going to either pass out or start crying.
“Marie?” Jean approached her warily. The girl turned to look at her.
“It’s alright, Jean... I guess I always suspected it...” She whispered, then straightened her stance and looked at Logan.
“And now?” She asked. Logan looked at her flabbergasted.
“What about ‘now’?” He asked.
“Are you two fucking now?” Marie clarified.
“No,” Logan and Jean answered in unison.
“Wouldn’t be right. Wasn’t right back then,” Logan grunted.
“In a nutshell, Scott will take this a sign that I’m cheating him. He needs time and space to adjust and put things back to perspective. Hence our little field trip,” Jean summed up their situation. Marie nodded. It stung, but perhaps she’d get over it. She adjusted the backpack she was carrying.

“We’re still okay?” Logan asked her with a lowered voice, falling purposefully behind and leaving Jean to lead their little squad.
“I don’t know. Ask again after this is over,” Marie said.
“Jesus, kid... It was before us. It’s not like I was cheating you. That doesn’t make it right, but the way I see it, you’re the only one who didn’t get hurt back then.”
“Well, now it hurts. Can we please forget this shit now? We can dig it up later,” Marie hissed and picked up her pace asking Jean to wait up.

At first they had planned to spend few nights in the village, but Logan had quickly realized that it would be the first place where Scott would search for them. The Blackbird would be safer choice. Fuselage would provide shelter and there were still unopened packages of rations and bottled water. They’d be just fine for few days, almost a week if the need arose. It would also be closer to home if Scott needed backup.
“Though I’m not all too sure if after that he’d be willing to take contact for any reason...” Jean whispered when they entered in to the jet, and it struck Marie how much the doctor was putting on the line. There was no telling what Scott would do. He could stay at the lumber mill, think things over and come to the right conclusion. He could think over things, come to a wrong conclusion and leave. Or he could come to a wrong conclusion and come after them. Jean might very well lose Scott for good. she was about to grasp Jean’s hand and offer her support, but the crackling of the walkie-talkie that Logan was carrying made them all freeze to their spots.
“Relax, guys. He doesn’t know. There’s probably a fucking bird on the radar...” Logan huffed and stomped out, leaving Jean and Marie to sort out details of their not so cosy retreat.

Once outside he clicked the receiver. Scott’s voice came through loud and clear.
“What took you so long to answer?” For a second Logan almost panicked. He was sure that he’d be unable to lie to Scott. He could see the other man sitting at the watchtower, and the radar blinking and bleeping in front of him, broadcasting their exact path to Scott.
“Couldn’t find the damn radio. Has something happened?” Logan asked.
“No. I just got bored. Anything new?” Scott asked.
“Nothing out of the ordinary yet. We’re at the village now. There seems to be a crypt of sorts underneath the church. We probably disappear from the radar when we go and investigate it.”
“What about the radio?” Now Scott sounded genuinely worried.
“It should work just fine. If it doesn’t, we’ll make sure that one of us stays near the exit with it, ready to alert the cavalry if anything goes wrong,” Logan prattled on, hoping that Scott wouldn’t notice how nervous he was and how elementary mistakes he made. A radio would work just fine but radar wouldn’t? Right.
“Cavalry?”
“You, Scott. If anything goes awry, we’ll contact you.”
“And leave the whole fucking mess for me to sort out? Gee, thanks!” Scott tried to sound less than enthusiastic, but Logan could practically hear how his words soothed his teammate’s fractured ego.
“Yeah... But hey, I better go now before the girls get too far ahead of me. We’ll call you if anything happens. Oh, and Jean asked me to tell you that she put some bread and jerky near the radar, and few bottles of water. Just in case you get hungry.”
“Found them already. Not hungry yet. But Logan...” Scott practically whispered his last words.
“Thank her for me, okay?”
“I will. Logan over and out.”

“Was it worth it?” Marie asked. They were sitting outside of the Blackbird, leaning their backs against the hull of the jet while Jean stayed inside, trying to find the perfect moment and perfect way to cut the bond that tied her together with Scott on psychological level.
“Was what worth what?” Logan asked.
“You. Jean. Was it good?”
“Uh...”
“Must have been. I know you both. You wouldn’t settle for anything less than perfect.”
“Ah, kid...”
“Was she better than me?”
“Jesus Christ! Stop grilling me! It’s kind of private!”
“Except that it isn’t. It is partly your fault that we’re in this mess.”
“Well, if you must know...”
“I do.”
“I felt like I was boning my fucking sister, and when it was over Jean told me that she had been imagining that she was with Scott because being with me felt so weird! Happy now?”

For a long while they sat in silence. Birds were chirping. Sun was shining and the hull of the jet felt toasty warm. When crickets tuned their violins Marie finally coughed.
“We’re only missing lonely tumbleweed rolling down that path and this is perfect,” she noted.
“Yeah.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You and me both, kid. I shouldn’t have done it.”
“But what is done can’t be undone. I think... I think I can live with this. I don’t know would it bother me more if it was good for you guys, but now I’m okay with it.”
“Yeah. Shit happens. Life goes on... Are we good now?” Logan asked, stretching his shoulders lazily.
“We’re good. For now. But you should know one thing.”
“Oh, yeah? What?”
“If I ever find out that you’re fucking with Jean again there won’t be anything left for Scott to beat up after I’m finished with you two. Understood?”
“Perfectly.”

They had been waiting around for several hours already when Logan’s walkie-talkie crackled. In the silence it sounded almost obscene, echoing from the surrounding trees rather offensively.
“Yeah?”
“Logan?” It was Scott. He sounded scared. Absolutely horrified.
“What’s the matter, Summers?” Logan asked, pretending not to know what was going on. Most likely Jean had finally found a way to cut the bond, and Scott was suffering from repercussions of it. Marie stood up and crept silently in to Blackbird to check up on Jean.
“I... I don’t feel so good...” Scott whispered, and Logan could hear him gagging.
“Are you sick?” He asked, suddenly truly worried. Legacy was still running rampant.
“I don’t know... My head hurts... And it’s so silent all of a sudden... Can you guys come back?” Scott was on the verge of tears, his voice thick and throaty.
“Uh... I have to ask from Jean about that, she said that there’s something she needs to investigate, and it...”
“Fuck... This really hurts... Tell Jean to come home!” Scott cried, then Logan could hear a harsh clatter and the line went dead.

“Jean!” He sprinted to the Blackbird, only to be stopped by Marie.
“She did it. But she’s a bit shaken out now. Can it wait?” She asked.
“Scott’s not doing so well. It sounded like he was really sick. Can this psychological mumbo-jumbo cause same kind of symptoms as Legacy?” Logan asked. Marie paled.
“I don’t know... Jean!”

They both hurried to the cockpit where Jean sat, rubbing the bridge of her nose, tears streaming down her cheeks.
“I feel awful... But I guess it had to be done...” She whispered, obviously trying to regain her composure, not doing a very good job with it.
“Scott just called. He’s feeling sick. He wants us to go back home,” Logan said. Jean shook her head.
“He’s feeling lonely. That’s understandable side-effect. But we can’t risk getting hurt by him just because of...”
“No, Jeannie... He’s really sick. At least it sounded like that over the radio. He’s having... Well, to me it sounded a lot like he’s caught the Legacy.”
“Way to go, wise-guy...” Marie growled when Jean at first froze, then fell to a sobbing heap over the console board of the jet.

“What the hell were you thinking, you moron?” Marie half whispered, half growled when they were trudging through the forest once more, this time trying to keep up with Jean who was hurrying to meet Scott.
“I was thinking that she should know. I was thinking that at least Scott deserves to see her once more if it happens to be Legacy. I was thinking that maybe this whole let’s-isolate-the-insane –scheme is something straight out of fucking Middle Ages, and maybe, just maybe we could snap Scott back to reality if we actually tried instead of running away from him!”
“And you just had to choose this day to grow a conscience! We could all get killed, you know!” Marie snapped, trying to keep up with Jean who was now picking up her pace.
“And if you’re so fucking afraid, why are you running?” Logan huffed, trying to preserve the precious air his lungs seemed to crave in obnoxious quantities. It wasn’t working very well, and by the time he reached the lumber mill he was staggering, fighting tooth and nail just to keep going.

It was a surreal experience. Again he could smell burning fuel; he could taste the led at the back of his throat and feel the small particles of soot to fill his nostrils. There was no fire or smoke in sight, yet both of the women laid collapsed on the ground. Large portion of the mill was blown up, sturdy planks and wooden support pillars splintered and scattered to all directions.

He checked both Marie and Jean for the best of his abilities. As far as he could tell, they were simply unconscious, not in any real danger right now. He left them. Scott. Where was he? What the hell had happened here?

Logan entered to what was left of the lumber mill. Place was an utter chaos. Whole sections of walls torn apart, heavy machines thrown around and twisted to odd shapes, smoking craters here and there...
“Scott?” There was no answer. He cleared his throat and called Scott again. When there was no answer he started to shift the piles of rubble and debris, fearing the worst. He could see it in his mind’s eye. What ever had happened, what ever had made the place to blow up, it had buried Scott alive. He’d fiend his friend badly injured, or worse, choked to death.

He didn’t notice the arrival of Marie and Jean, not before Marie started screaming. Soon enough Jean joined to the choir, and he was forced to leave his rescue attempt and turn his attention to the corner where the women stood. He shuffled to them, picking his way through broken slabs of concrete and sharply jutting splinters of wood and metal rods.

For a while they all could just stand there, staring at the sight in front of them with disbelieving eyes.

Marie was the first to turn away. Logan could hear her trying to run, then vomiting. Jean had stopped screaming and crying. She was frozen, barely breathing. Logan tried to grasp her shoulders to steer her away from the horrendous sight, but she refused, kneeling beside blown up and mutilated corpse they could clearly recognise as Scott Summers from a broken visor partly covering his face.

He was digging a grave to the hard-packed soil, flies buzzing lazily all around the bloodied corpse that lay next to him. Sun was high on the sky, and he had to squint his eyes when it reflected from the visor. It suddenly struck him. The visor. Why the hell had Scott tried to use it when he very well knew that it was far from fixed? They had glued the pieces carefully together last night, but Scott himself had said that he wasn’t all too sure if it would work, that he’d try to find something better to fix the visor before he tested it.

“Marie!” The grave and Scott forgotten he turned on his heels, discarding the shovel he had been using. He could see Marie, sitting with Jean at the shadow of the demolished lumber mill. Jean was rocking back and forth, Marie was holding her.
“Marie!” He called the girl again and took running when she didn’t seem to hear him.
“Why Scott was wearing the visor?” He asked, crouching beside women. They seemed to wake up from their trancelike state, both blinking their eyes in utter confusion.
“He wouldn’t have used it. Not without a reason,” Jean finally stuttered. Her words made Marie and Logan both straighten their stance.
“And that gives us a good reason to get the fuck out of here,” Logan grunted standing up and pulling Jean with him. Marie helped him, offering Jean her support as well.
“Whatever it was that attacked Scott and made him try the visor might still be around here, just waiting for the right moment to come after us.”
“Where are we going?” Marie asked, her eyes still watering but scanning their surroundings sharply.
“To the village. We need a safe place to regroup and plan our next step,” Logan said.

The forest around them was deathly silent. Birds weren’t chirping anymore, bees weren’t buzzing, and even the sun felt somehow dimmer than what it had been only minutes ago. Air around them felt heavy as led and thicker than tar. Taste of it was bitter. Something had definitely happened, and as they ran through the forest Logan could practically feel something watching them, following their every move. It made him nervous. He was fucking never afraid of anything, he had faced off with the most fearsome adversaries known to man, and now he was running from a shadow, trying not to stumble over his own trembling knees. He could feel the sheer terror emanating from Jean, woman’s hand grasping his in a death grip. He stole a quick glimpse of Marie running on the opposite side of Jean, girls face twisted to a mask of absolute horror. Then, suddenly he got an irresistible urge to duck.

“Get down!” His command reached Marie and Jean in the nick of time, they all fell on their faces to the soft moss, and something large soared right past them, raising a strong breeze and peppering them with a generous dose of fallen leaves and other debris risen from the ground.

“Get up, get up, get the fuck up!” He couldn’t get them back on their feet fast enough. Whatever it had been, it would return soon, he was sure of it. It wouldn’t do to take a nap in the line of fire. And they were running again, something akin of a whining of a jet engine echoing from all around them. The whole fucking forest sounded as if the trees had grown motors and were trying to lift off from their roots.

The hand that held his now felt more delicate. Quick glimpse affirmed that it belonged to Marie. She still clung to Jean who looked dazed enough to stop if she was left alone.
“We’re not going to make it to the village! Go to Blackbird!” He shouted over the noise, letting go of Marie who turned around and dragged Jean after her, through thick and thorny bushes lining their path.

Logan chose the opposite direction, raising a ruckus loud and visible enough to make their pursuer to believe that the women were still with him. He was going to keep running until he got caught or until the one following him got bored.

He didn’t get far. Suddenly he noticed that he was running in a greenish cloud, sticky mist covering him quickly from head to toe, making breathing an impossible task to perform. He fell to the ground, gasping for air, trying to shake off the translucent barrier that invaded his mouth, throat and lungs. He was drowning. Burning fuel was raining on him, his skin was blistering, it was so fucking hot and he could taste the gasoline and there was no air to breathe. His last, futile effort was to cut open his own throat in hopes of breathing through the gaping hole his claws left on his flesh. The pain of it cleared his head momentarily, and he could see a jet, landing nearby, several black figures pouring out of it and approaching him.

“False alarm, guys! This one’s a mutie!”
“What the fuck? Why were they running?”
“Think about it, you fucking moron! They just found that one guy from the lumber mill! Then we come in! Wouldn’t you run?”
“No? I would stay and try to find out what’s going on!”
“And that’s exactly why you have a life-expectancy of a pogo-stick tester on a minefield. Shit... Let’s get the fuck out of here. You saw those claws. I don’t want to be here when that freak wakes up...”