Logan stood frozen in the shattered blast doorway. The heavy scent of gamma radiation—a sharp, metallic tang that tasted like copper and burnt ozone—coated the back of his throat. His chest heaved, steam rolling off his broad, bare shoulders as his accelerated healing factor fought to close the lingering gashes from his previous battles.
"You won't do it, Stryker," Logan growled, his voice a low, gravelly vibration that sent a visible ripple across the surface of the green fluid in the vats. He kept his hands at his sides, his claws retracted, playing the part of the cornered animal. "You spent a decade and billions of dollars building this facility. You don't have the spine to throw it all away just because one experiment went sideways."
Stryker didn't blink. His posture was perfectly rigid, his tailored military uniform pristine amidst the industrial grit of the lab. His fingers remained tightly coiled around the heavy steel lever on the central control console.
"You still fundamentally misunderstand me, Logan," Stryker replied, his tone devoid of any manic super-villain energy. It was cold, clinical, and completely sincere. "This isn't about funding. This isn't about pride. This is about the survival of the human race. Mutants are a plague infecting our world, and I was trying to build the a way to protect our species. If I cannot control the outbreak of the cancer that is mutations, then scorched earth is the only tactically sound option remaining."
Stryker reached up with his free left hand and tapped a comms earpiece resting in his ear.
"Task Force X. Move in. Execute Protocol Zero. The asset is no longer viable."
[SYSTEM WARNING: MULTIPLE HOSTILE SIGNATURES DETECTED]
Liam didn't even have time to curse.
The reinforced steel grating above Logan's head suddenly detonated. A massive breach charge blew a hole the size of a minivan in the ceiling, sending tons of concrete and twisted rebar raining down. Logan threw himself backward, rolling gracefully across the slick floor as the debris crashed exactly where he had been standing.
Through the dust and smoke, thick black rappelling lines dropped from the breach.
A dozen heavily armored soldiers descended into the chamber in perfect, terrifying synchronization. This wasn't standard military security. These were the elite of Task Force X—the absolute best mutant-hunters on the planet. They wore jet-black tactical armor interwoven with ceramic and carbon-nanotube plating. Their faces were hidden behind ominous, featureless ballistic masks fitted with glowing red optic sensors.
And they were armed to the teeth with technology specifically designed to kill the unkillable.
"Take him down! Target the joints! Overload his regeneration!" the squad leader barked, raising a massive, shoulder-mounted plasma rifle.
"STRYKER!!!" Logan roared, his eyes flashing as the feral instincts of the Wolverine surged to the forefront of his mind.
SNIKT!
Six adamantium claws erupted from his knuckles, gleaming with a deadly, silver perfection under the red emergency lights..
[BERSERK RAGE: ENGAGED]
The squad leader fired. A blinding blue bolt of superheated plasma tore through the air, completely burning through the metal in its path.
Logan dove to the right. The plasma bolt slammed into a heavy steel support pillar behind him, instantly melting a hole clean through the three-inch-thick metal. The heat washed over Logan's back, singeing his hair, but he didn't stop moving.
He closed the distance on the nearest two soldiers before they could even track him with their sensors.
Logan dropped low, sliding across his knees. He swept his right arm in a brutal, horizontal arc. The razor-sharp adamantium effortlessly sheared through the carbon-nanotube armor of the first soldier's shins, slicing through bone and marrow.
SCHLIKT!
The man let out a horrifying shriek as he collapsed, but Logan was already moving past him. Blood splattering across his chest.
He vaulted off the falling soldier's back, launching himself through the air at the second man.
RAT-A-TAT-A-TAT!
The second soldier opened fire with an assault rifle loaded with depleted uranium rounds. The bullets slammed into Logan's chest and shoulders in mid-air.
Thwack-thwack-thwack!
The impact felt like being hit by a sledgehammer. Blood exploded from Logan's torso, spraying the air. The bullets flattened against his ribs. Liam ground his teeth against the searing pain, letting the rage fuel him. His regeneration was already pushing the crushed bullets out of his muscle tissue as he descended.
Logan landed directly on the soldier's chest, driving him violently into the steel grating. He crossed his arms and brought both sets of claws down, burying them deep into the man's armored shoulder plates, pinning him to the floor.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!"
"Form up! Suppression fire! Use the cryo-tethers!" the squad leader screamed, backing away toward Stryker's elevated platform to form a defensive perimeter.
Four soldiers stepped forward, dropping to one knee. They raised specialized, wide-barreled launchers and fired simultaneously.
Instead of bullets, thick, metallic bolas shot across the room. They wrapped tightly around Logan's wrists and ankles. The moment the metal clasped, a violent hiss echoed through the chamber, and the tethers expelled a burst of pure liquid nitrogen.
The temperature dropped to absolute zero in a fraction of a second. Thick, jagged ice rapidly crystallized over Logan's arms and legs, freezing his muscles solid and binding him to the floor. The intense cold sent a wave of agonizing pain straight to his core, drastically slowing his healing factor.
"AAAAAAAH!" Logan roared in anger and pain.
"Got him!" one of the soldiers yelled, dropping his launcher and pulling a heavy combat knife. "Move in for the decapitation! Stryker wants the head!"
"You're gonna need a bigger knife, bub," Logan snarled, his breath foging in the freezing air.
[SKILL ACTIVATED: HOT CLAWS]
Deep within his forearms, the energy shifted. The six silver claws protruding from his frozen fists suddenly changed color. They glowed a dull cherry red, then a vibrant, searing orange, and finally a blinding, terrifying white-hot.
The heat was so strong it caused the ice to instantly turn into steam. The solid ice encasing his arms instantly dissolved into massive clouds of moisture. The metal cryo-tethers superheated, turning red-hot before snapping under the sheer expanding pressure.
Logan burst out of the steam cloud like a demon out of hell.
"ROOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
The soldier with the combat knife barely had time to widen his eyes behind his visor. Logan didn't even use his claws. He stepped inside the man's guard and delivered a brutal, devastating headbutt. Logan's adamantium skull met the soldier's carbon-plated helmet. The helmet caved in completely with a sickening CRUNCH, and the man was thrown backward, sliding twenty feet across the floor.
"He broke the cryo-locks! Switch to high-frequency sonics!" the squad leader ordered, pure panic finally bleeding into his disciplined voice.
Three soldiers on the flanks dropped their rifles and pulled spherical grenades from their belts. They slammed the activation timers and hurled them at Logan's feet.
The grenades detonated with sonic waves screeching throuhg the air.
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
An ear-shattering, high-frequency sonic wave blasted through Sector 4. The sound was specifically calibrated to the hyper-sensitive auditory range of mutants. For the human soldiers in their sound-dampening helmets, it was a loud hum. For Logan, it was absolute, mind-shattering pain.
Blood instantly poured from Logan's nose and ears. His enhanced senses were completely destroyed. The world spun violently, and the solid steel floor felt like a pitching ship deck. He dropped to his knees, his claws scraping uselessly against the metal grating as he clutched his head.
"Now! Put him down!"
The remaining Task Force X soldiers moved in, raising their rifles, the lasers painting dozens of red dots across Logan's kneeling form.
"Colonel Stryker! Colonel, you must stop this immediately!"
A desperate, ragged voice cut through the gunfire.
From the shadows of the secondary hallway, Dr. Abraham Cornelius stumbled into the massive laboratory. The head scientist of the Weapon X program was a terrifying sight. His pristine white lab coat was scorched and covered in soot. He was missing his wire-rimmed glasses, and he clutched a shattered tablet computer against his chest. He was limping heavily, blood dripping from a nasty shrapnel wound on his forehead.
Stryker glared down from his elevated platform, his hand still resting on the emergency lever, hovering just inches above the critical release point. "Dr. Cornelius. I assumed you perished in the upper-level purge."
"The purge failed! The systems are completely out of control!" Cornelius wheezed, completely ignoring the massive, bloody battle taking place just fifty feet away. He hobbled toward the base of Stryker's control platform, waving the shattered tablet frantically. "Colonel, you cannot pull that lever! If you trigger the neurotoxin flood into Banner's tank, the feedback loop will cascade into the sub-floor!"
"Dr. Banner is a casualty of war, Abraham," Stryker said coldly. "And Logan is currently being neutralized. The operation is over."
"You don't understand!" Cornelius shrieked, his voice cracking with a terrifying, manic pitch. "When Logan severed the primary hybridization conduits on Level 3, the genetic material—the processed adamantium marrow we extracted from him, mixed with Banner's isolated gamma markers—it didn't drain! The system entered an automated emergency bypass! It rerouted the payload!"
Logan forced his eyes open, fighting through the agonizing sonic ringing in his ears. He looked at Cornelius, his animal instincts suddenly flaring with an overwhelming sense of dread. The hair on his arms stood on end.
"Rerouted where?" Stryker demanded, his eyes narrowing.
"To the deep gestation vault!" Cornelius cried, pointing a trembling, bloody finger toward the massive, heavily reinforced blast doors at the far end of the chamber, labeled with stark white lettering: BATCH-H: CRYOGENIC ISOLATION. "The matrix is complete, Colonel! It didn't fail! It accelerated! The hybridization of the mutant genome and the gamma baseline is active right now!"
"That's impossible," Stryker whispered, his military composure finally showing a slight fracture. "The gestation process requires months of cellular stabilization."
"The gamma radiation acted as a hyper-accelerant!" Cornelius sobbed, dropping the tablet. "If you pull that lever, the resulting pressure change will unseal the vault! You'll let it out!"
Stryker looked at the vault doors, then back down to Logan.
In that moment of distraction, the sonic grenades burned out, their batteries dying with a fading whine.
The ringing in Logan's ears stopped.
Liam didn't hesitate. Now or never.
"GRAAAAAAAH!"
Logan roared, utilizing the pure, unbridled fury of his Berserk Rage. The world tinted a violent, blood-soaked red. He ignored the pain, ignored the heavily armed soldiers, and became a true force of nature.
He leaped entirely over the front line of Task Force X soldiers, his powerful leg muscles propelling him twenty feet through the air. He landed directly on the central catwalk leading to Stryker's platform.
"Fire! Bring him down! Don't let him reach the console!" the squad leader screamed, spinning his plasma rifle around.
A hail of gunfire tore into Logan's back. Adamantium-piercing rounds shredded his flesh, tearing chunks of muscle from his lats and spine. But the rage numbed the pain. He sprinted up the catwalk, a juggernaut of blood and glowing white-hot metal.
Two soldiers stepped onto the stairs to block him, raising heavy riot shields laced with vibranium mesh.
Logan didn't slow down. He crossed his arms and threw his entire body weight forward into a devastating spinning slash.
SHR-KKKXT!
The superheated adamantium claws sheared straight through the vibranium mesh like a hot knife through butter. The shields fell away in molten halves. Logan delivered a brutal spinning kick, sending both soldiers flying off the catwalk to crash into the chemical vats below.
He was ten feet away from Stryker.
"Stryker! Step away from the lever!" Logan bellowed, his claws raised, ready to decapitate the man who had ruined his no Logans life.
Stryker looked at the feral, blood-soaked monster charging at him. He looked at the terrified Cornelius below. And then, he looked at Bruce Banner, suspended in the bubbling green fluid of the central tank.
"I told you, Logan," Stryker said softly, his eyes reflecting the flashing red emergency lights. "Scorched earth."
Stryker didn't step away. He pulled the lever.
CLICK-CLACK.
The heavy steel mechanism locked into place.
Time seemed to slow down for Liam. He watched in absolute horror as the automated systems engaged with a deafening, pneumatic hiss. The massive extraction tubes connected to the top of Bruce Banner's glass cylinder flared a bright, blinding crimson.
Thick, dark, heavy neurotoxin flooded down the pipes, dumping directly into the emerald suspension fluid.
Inside the tank, the reaction was instantaneous.
Bruce Banner, the mild-mannered, brilliant scientist who had been drugged and comatose for hours, violently convulsed. The murky green liquid instantly turned a dark, violently boiling purple. Bruce's head snapped back, his jaw unhinging in a silent, agonizing scream beneath his mechanical respirator.
His eyes snapped open.
They were a solid, radiant, completely toxic, radioactive green. The light pouring from his irises was so intense it cast horrific, emerald shadows across the entire laboratory.
"Oh God..." Cornelius whimpered from the floor, curling into a fetal position.
Bruce's fragile, human chest expanded. A sickening series of loud, echoing pops and cracks filled the room as his skeletal structure began to hyper-extend. The gamma radiation inside his cells spiked to apocalyptic levels, fighting the neurotoxin by multiplying his muscle mass exponentially. His skin tore against the heavy titanium chains holding him, but the chains were already beginning to groan and buckle under the impossible, growing pressure.
The twelve-inch-thick reinforced ballistic glass of the cylinder spiderwebbed with massive, jagged cracks. The pressure inside the tank was reaching critical mass.
"Take the shot! Take the shot on the mutant!" the squad leader of Task Force X screamed, aiming his plasma rifle directly at Logan's head from below.
But before the soldier could pull the trigger, the entire mountain shook.
THOOM.
The shockwave knocked every single Task Force X soldier off their feet. Logan stumbled, his claws digging deep into the metal grating of the catwalk to keep himself from being thrown over the edge. Stryker grabbed the control console, his face draining of all color.
THOOM.
The second impact was heavier. The thick, concrete walls of Sector 4 began to crack. Fine, white plaster dust rained down from the ceiling like a grim, artificial snow. The pulsing crimson emergency lights flickered, throwing the room into darkness only lit by a flashing red light and loud alarms.
The heavy blast doors marked BATCH-H: CRYOGENIC ISOLATION bulged outward.
"No..." Stryker whispered, staring at the vault doors. "Cornelius... what did you make?"
"I didn't make it!" Cornelius screamed, weeping into his hands. "It made itself!"
CRACK-BOOM!
The massive, three-ton reinforced steel vault doors were blown entirely off their hinges. The thick metal slabs flew sixty feet across the room, completely crushing the squad leader of Task Force X and smashing into the far concrete wall with a deafening crash splattering blood and matter across the wall.
A thick, rolling cloud of freezing white cryogenic steam and glowing, toxic green vapor erupted from the dark, cavernous vault, pouring across the laboratory floor like a living, breathing fog. The temperature in the room plummeted to near freezing, frost instantly coating the steel floor plates.
The massive glass cylinder holding the transforming Hulk completely shattered.
Thousands of gallons of radioactive green and purple fluid flooded the room, washing over the remaining Task Force X soldiers, who screamed as the acid burned through their armor. A massive, roaring green fist tore through the remaining chains. The Hulk was free, his roar echoing through the chamber.
But the Hulk wasn't the most terrifying thing in the room.
From the deep, dark, freezing fog of the isolation vault, a shadow emerged.
The footsteps were impossibly heavy, crushing the steel grating into twisted scrap with every slow, deliberate pace.
Logan's enhanced senses were completely overwhelmed. The scent of raw ozone, thick blood, and burning adamantium was suffocating. The blue interface of his System suddenly glitched wildly, the text turning a blinding, frantic red that completely covered Liam's vision.
Slowly, the silhouette stepped out of the fog and into the strobe lights of the ruined laboratory.
It was a nightmare forged by madmen.
The creature stood a towering, impossible ten feet tall, its chest and shoulders easily twice as massive as the Hulk currently tearing through the soldiers below. Its skin was a horrific shade of ash-grey, thick and leathery, pulsing with raw, visible veins of radioactive heat. Its musculature was grotesque, bulging with an unnatural density that looked like braided steel cables shifting beneath the skin.
But what made Liam's blood run completely cold was the metal.
Protruding directly through the creature's grey skin—running up its spine, capping its massive shoulders, and wrapping around its thick forearms—were heavy, jagged armor plates of raw, unpolished adamantium. The indestructible metal had been successfully bonded to its cellular structure, creating a living, biological exoskeleton.
The behemoth stopped in the center of the room. Its massive chest expanded as it took its first true breath, the air hissing through its teeth like a furnace blast.
Slowly, the monster raised its massive, tree-trunk arms.
SNIKT!
With a deafening, melodic chime three massive, curved blades of shiny adamantium extended from the back of each colossal hand. Each blade was the size of a medieval broadsword, thick, deadly, and perfectly forged.
Weapon H slowly tilted its massive, block-shaped head upward. Its face was a terrifying amalgamation of human agony, primal fury, and calculated malice.
Its eyelids snapped open.
There were no pupils. Just two solid, burning slits of pure, radioactive crimson light.
The eyes bypassed the screaming Task Force X soldiers. They bypassed the roaring Hulk. They locked instantly and completely onto Logan, standing frozen on the catwalk.
The monster opened its massive, fanged jaw, and let out a roar.
" AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRGH"