xp_logs | Death Is Legion

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Following Dugan's email, a select group meets to discuss Weapon X and what to do next.

Harry’s Hideaway likely wasn’t the optimum place to conduct a meeting regarding a former top secret black-book weapons development agency. But with a mixed group of X-Men, X-Force, and Independents, commandeering any of their available meeting spaces would raise questions, and each man had their own reasons to play things close to the chest for now, without involving friends and allies. It seemed like a lifetime ago that WEAPONX had re-emerged from the shadows, just in time for ALPHA FLIGHT to be executed. SHIVA had been devastating, and in the aftermath, no one believed that there was a connection. Stryker was dead, Lyman compromised, and SHIVA seemed the last gasp of a program that was ready to fade away; a past safely dead.

It had all changed, and the deeper they looked, the more evidence of life they’d found. Oyama’s daughter, safely and absolutely dead by Logan’s account had nearly killed Kane in Madripoor and revealed other WEAPONX operatives still roaming free, connected to the deaths of his former teammates for reasons no one could fathom. Marie had been undercover for over two years, doggedly chasing down leads, and even she had admitted that it seemed hopeless. But while she had admitted defeat, others hadn't, and Dugan's email to Kane had been more than enough for him to reach out to the others.

They all had their reasons – Logan had a past that the program had stripped away. North's had likewise been tampered with and buried. Wade had been marked for death and lived with the uncertainty that the target on him wasn’t still active. As for Kane, the only one who hadn’t been part of the program, he needed to know who and why his teammates had been slaughtered by the echoes of a program that ended fifteen years before it reached out and destroyed his friends. So it was in the quiet rear of the bar, where Harry dropped a ‘reserved’ pylon on the stairs leading up and told the staff not to bother them that the group slowly filtered in.

Logan stepped into Harry's and did an unconscious sweep of the people there. They couldn't be too careful now. There was no telling where this might lead them or the danger it would bring. WEAPONX always brought shit with it that came out of nowhere and swept up people that shouldn't be involved. Time and again, all it did was ruin lives and yet here he was, still looking for the answers that divided his life into two periods. The nebulous current life where his memories began and the blank space that came before. It was just his luck that when he finally had some measure of peace about his past it came calling.

He gave a nod to Harry as he moved toward the rear of the bar. They were familiar faces here and it wouldn't seem too out of the ordinary for them to meet. Whatever Dugan'd found had Gar taking every precaution to keep those uninvolved with the program out of it. Logan couldn't argue with that. He would've pushed for the same thing. Maybe he was more on edge than he needed to be, but fuck if all this shit didn't send his senses into high alert. He nodded at Gar as he took a seat at the table in the back room. It's time they excised WEAPONX from their lives once and for all.

After watching Logan make his way inside, Wade waited for several minutes to make sure the other Canadian hadn't been followed. He was glad he'd agreed to have Logan pass his information on to Kane, since it looked like they might actually have a solid lead into the program, but decades of ingrained paranoia and habit were hard to break. This was a can of worms he'd been actively avoiding for longer than some of the kids at the mansion had been alive.

Slapping a smile on his face, the mercenary slid out of the shadows where he'd been lurking and headed inside. He gave Harry a small salute, a pretty patron an eyebrow waggle, and then made his way upstairs. The smile disappeared as he approached the table and sat down with a nod to each of the other men.

The last person of their expected party slipped in a minute later, form covered in his usual black trench coat and smelling faintly of cigarette smoke as he shut the door behind him. North greeted the other men with a short jerk of his head and took the last available seat without ceremony. It was an unlikely group, to be sure, and the German man could almost taste the feeling of expectation emanating from his companions.

“This seems like a familiar setting,” he observed. Four men and a round table. “Shall I bring out the poker cards?”

"Yeah, I just finished paying off my debt from the last one, North." Kane wasn't an especially great card player at the best of times, and had been thoroughly sharked by the other three the last time he accepted an invitation for a 'friendly game'. Next time, he'd let Adrienne play for him. "Jokes aside, WEAPONX has made a reappearance. Dugan has a contact who's been keeping a discrete and illegal eye on Lyman in Symkaria. He got an anonymous text that 'the Bug House' was active again. He thinks its some kind of lab."

A quick, almost feral grin flitted across Logan's face, but quickly smoothed out into guarded concern. "The Bug House, huh? Could be a lab or could be something worse." He was leaning toward worse and while he may've been WEAPONX's favorite pet experiment, the name hadn't triggered any flash of memory. He cut his gaze to North and Wade. "You two hear anythin' about this?"

"I heard of labs up in the Arctic, a couple in the US desert," Wade offered. "But nothing nicknamed or codenamed the Bug House. Didn't really make it my business to keep track of their locations after I got out - more concerned with keeping them off my trail."

"Not on the old lists," North replied, face carefully neutral. "But then Lyman is a little shit. If your informant is sure that it is a lab, I can draw them up and attempt to narrow down the location -- but it assumes that it is not a new operation, and I am curious as to why and how you think it ties up with WeaponX." An invitation, if nothing else, for Kane to share the rest of his intel with them as the older man crossed his legs ankle to knee and leaned back in his seat.

"We've seen the number before connected to Stryker's network. Wisdom ran a trace on it for it, but it's been routed through a dozen calling exchanges. There's no way to trace it." Kane shrugged. "So, you know, Occum's Razor. Lyman might be connected to another highly secretive program from his past that is still active, but up to now, WEAPONX has been the only one we've uncovered."

"We've chased down less. This is the first tangible lead we've had in years. There's no way we can just sit around and do nothin'." Alpha Flight needed to be put to rest. They'd gone long enough without having someone answer for their deaths. Even if all this turned up was one more defunct horror of WEAPONX, it'd tell them something. Whatever answers they found wouldn't be pleasant, but Logan would prefer knowing than not.

"Figuring out if the program's still alive and kickin' sounds like a good idea to me," Wade said, sitting forward in his chair and braced his elbows on the table. He didn't have the emotional investment the others did, since he hadn't lost anyone to WeaponX or its derivatives. "So where's this Bug House supposed to be?"

"The problem is that there's no other information. It could be filled with troops, or mutant operatives, or just have had a power fluctuation and be an empty shell. We literally have no idea what we'll be walking into in order to check it out. And-" Kane took a breath. "I don't think we should involve the X-Men."

Logan shrugged and sat back in his chair, crossing his arms against his chest. Gar could be a stickler for doing things the right way, but even he had to see there was no sitting back and letting this go. He looked sharply at him. "So you are considerin' followin' it up. And I couldn't agree more. The less bodies we have in on this the less chance somethin' will go wrong. Though they aren't gonna be happy with us after."

"WeaponX doesn't play nice," Wade said, frowning. "I agree - it's better to keep this as simple and low-key as possible. Besides, the leather brigade's got that whole 'no killing' thing and frankly, WeaponX would eat them alive. Or try to. Summers would probably make digestion more than a little uncomfortable. Like a really, really bad case of heartburn, only with lasers. If the facility's staffed and operational, expect military-style resistance, full-force. These are no holds barred kind of people and killing any of us would be just another Tuesday for them."

A corner of North’s lip curled up in an expression that could pass off as bland amusement. It was not so much his opinion that the X-Men would not stomach a lot of things, than it was about pushing a tactical advantage and getting things done swiftly. “Probably a good idea to keep the numbers down if we are going in blind anyway,” he agreed. “We do it fast and dirty and the extraction job would be less messy if things go south.” And it was not his problem, really, if people in the mansion took offence to being kept in the dark.
"Before we get too far up our own assholes, the X-Men have faced WEAPONX operatives before and won. And giving up some of the most powerful well-trained mutants in the world as backup is not exactly something to be taken lightly. If WEAPONX is active again, and they have the kind of firepower in the worst case scenario, I don't want to wave the school in front of their eyes as a target. If it's just us, we can led them on a cross country chase and give Xavier's a chance to lock this place down and be ready for them." Kane shook his head. "We get killed, that's how it goes. But if we drag the kids down with us, there's a special part of hell with our names on waiting."

"No shit. They've been subjected to enough as it is. If worst comes to worst, Summers and them should be here, not caught in the crossfire with us." Logan gripped the table and rubbed at the edge with his thumb. Between the four of them, they had more than enough training and years dealing with WEAPONX. It was also easier operating with a small team and if things went to hell, they could all be trusted to disappear and lead their pursuers on a merry chase to four very different corners of the Earth.
"So when do we leave?" Wade asked, looking from Logan to North to Kane with raised eyebrows. WeaponX was a tricky bitch - he'd spent almost half his life trying to outrun them. It was sort of counter-intuitive to turn right around now and wave a red flag for them. Then again, taking the fight to the source might< i>possibly put a stop to some of the more irritating things the program was doing to track its former assets.

"My schedule is free. Anyone else got anything better to do?" There was no response, and Kane nodded. "Then let's go."