The Wild Hunt - The Chase Begins

[x-dominion.livejournal.com]

With help from Director Colcord, the group heads to the Canadian Rockies and the old feral training ground, where hopefully their prey awaits.

Warning: Violent death.



It was the first time Garrison Kane had ever been inside Canada illegally. The Director hated the idea, but even he had no choice. Huxley had given up the location, the Canadians had nothing with which to respond, and their window of opportunity was extremely short. Colcord agreed to look the other way as he provided coordinates to a long shuttered WEAPONX complex. It was oddly only thirty kilometres from a train station as the crow flies. But this part of the Rockies never had any distance that was straight. Mountains climbed towards the skies, split between by deep valleys, fast rushing streams, and broken slopes.

They were able to follow an old prospecting trail partway up the pass into Snaring Mountain. Quickly it became too rough for vehicles, even the four wheel jeep. It had been part of the decommissioning process, breaking up the road and leaving them with at least twenty kilometres on foot up a rough, densely wooded forty-five incline to the complex.

"Everyone ready?"

Kyle grunted, eyes and expression distant. He'd struggled to keep from urging them to drive faster in the jeep, fighting between wanting to get as far as possible as fast as possible and knowing that they were going to fast as they could as safely as they could. Now that he was out of the Jeep, he was far too calm. His normal easy movements and loose posture was gone, and the anger and impatience from the drive had been replaced with something still and silent.

Wade finished checking his weapons and signaled his agreement to Kane while keeping one eye on Kyle. Nothing felt quite right. Aside from the monumentally awful situation, he kept getting this feeling like there were a couple more shoes ready to drop at any given moment. He'd spent the last twenty years actively avoiding Weapon-X and now he was hieing off to track down whatever was left of it with a group of guys who'd almost all come out of the program, themselves. If something else was going to go wrong, he could only imagine it would go wrong beyond even his ability to imagine.

Logan nodded and kept scanning the woods around them. Everything seemed normal enough but then that’s when things usually went to hell. He had to resist the impulse to shred everything in front of them with his claws. His senses were buzzing with something he couldn’t name. Half realized thoughts were floating at the back of his mind but the moment he tried to focus on one it disappeared behind a dull cottony feeling. It was different from the usual emotions that came tied up with WeaponX. Anger, rage, confusion, sure. Whatever the hell this was something completely new.

The tense silence that had blanketed their small group very early on the trip was probably enough to set most teeth on edge. But North was content to keep it as they commenced the climb. There was too much riding on this, and too much going on in all of their heads. The German man slipped the compass he had been peering at into his pocket and took up the rear, quietly immersing himself in visions – triggered by the physical assertion of the climbing – to distract him from the weariness he was bound to feel before any of his companions.

Other than the odd pause to reorient themselves with the map or to take a sip of water, they moved at a steady pace up and down the mountain trails. They could have moved faster but Colcord's warnings that the facility was still occupied forced them to move with caution. Finally, they pulled up short of a clearing where the embers of a fire could be seen at the far side.

"Logan, you want to take this?" Kane whispered, trusting the other man's preternatural senses completely.

Logan just nodded an affirmative as he moved ahead of the group on silent feet. He was already picking up a mix of scents that decidedly didn't belong in the woods. The faint pervasive scent of human fear had to be Mrs. Gibney and under it was a familiar floral that always wafted out of the ridiculous packages Kyle would get. There was also a metallic sour odor that had to be Arkady. Nothing indicated they were still nearby. No heartbeats or fresh scent. He signaled the all clear to the rest of the group as he cautiously approached the edge of the clearing. There was no telling what kind of nasty surprises might've been left behind.

Wade circled slightly to Logan's left, keeping behind the other mutant as he unholstered two of his handguns and scanned the area. He made sure to look through the trees for any telltale hints of snipers attempting to stay downwind of them. He didn't spot anything, but then he hadn't really thought he would.

Kyle hung back - the smells weren't strong, but they overwhelmed his senses fully. It was all he could think about, the rose and lavender smell of his mother's shampoo, she'd used the same one as long as he could remember. It was soured by a tang stronger than fear - more like terror - in the air, it seemed like it was clinging to the trees themselves. He kept a pace back, behind Garrison, and tried to clear his head, with no success.

Kane waited for North to come shoulder to shoulder with him, with Kyle still lagging. "I've got a bad feeling about this." Kane whispered. "This looks like an old cooking fire."

The tight look on North’s face did not bode well for any of them, and he patted Kane heavily on the shoulder, voice pitched low so it would not carry to the others’ sensitive ears. “Ja, I think it is. Look after the boy.” If he even could be referred to as such. “Bad may be a slight understatement.” The German man stepped towards the far end of the campsite, briefly signalling for Wade to move with him as he pointed to a patch of freshly turned soil on the ground and started digging at it with a stick snagged from the ground.

Having come to the same conclusion as Kane and North, Wade was glad he couldn't smell the things the Logan and Kyle were probably smelling. He followed the German, keeping a few steps behind him, and peered over his shoulder as he turned over clods of dirt and rocks. It didn't take long for bones to catch on the end of the stick, charred and obviously gnawed - they weren't animal remains.

"Shit," Wade whispered, holstering his weapons and turning quickly on his heel to make eye contact with Kane first, then Kyle.

Sweet burnt flowers, like the potpourri burners his mother had always forgotten to put out until they smoked, and ash and smoke. Kyle had a flash of memory, his mother sitting with him on the porch of their 'new' house, long before Tyler had built the additions or the deck or the shed, smoking her last cigarette and promising him that she'd quit. He'd been seven, and promised he'd go with her to the salon and sit and be good while they colored her hair, even if it was 'stinky and boring' if she'd quit.

He growled, low and deep, and fell into a low crouch, claws digging into the dirt.

"Kyle..." Kane couldn't see what they turned over, but Kyle's reaction was enough for him to guess. "Kyle. You need to listen to me. You need to get on top of this for right now."

There was little response, just a slowing of the growl. Kyle's eyes didn't meet Kane's, or the turned over bones. He was focused on a point into the treeline. His jaw worked briefly, as though he was about to say something. He tossed his head once and shook himself, and then sprung forward, heedless of any warnings.

Wade caught North disappearing from his peripheral vision, the German's sense of self preservation evidently stronger than his own, even as he took a running leap and tackled Kyle. There was something eerily familiar to Wade, the way Kyle moved, maybe, or the way he growled - it made him think of Genosha, of the way Kyle had acted after Emma turned off their ability to feel pain. Aggressive, murderous intent in every line of his body.

The two men rolled, and Wade came up on top, just long enough for Kyle to sink his teeth into the older man's shoulder. Wade's grip loosened, and Kyle kicked out of it, coming up bloody-faced. "Get off. They killed her." The rest of it he didn't bother to explain, or didn't know. He stayed on all fours, low and muscles trembling. "Either help me or fuck off."

"We're gonna help you," Wade said, crouched in front of Kyle. "But we don't know how many of them are out there and you running off at this point's basically suicide. So listen to Kane and fucking think for a second." He could feel blood soaking into the sleeve of his shirt, beneath the tac vest he wore, but he never took his eyes off Kyle.

Kyle was better off having Wade reason with him since Logan wanted nothing more than to tear off after the bastards that'd done this and make them pay and pay hard. No one deserved to die like that. Logan moved in toward the charred remains to see for himself. The smell stuck in his throat and then the scene was overlaid with a memory that socked him in the gut.

He was in the woods, disoriented by sensory overload, struggling to gain control to complete the simple task of finding a stash of supplies. The bag had been doused with peppermint before it and Logan had been let loose into the woods. He came back to himself with a shake of his head. "Listen to him. We ain't gonna get anywhere chargin' off on instinct."

"The ashes are still warm. Whatever was here didn't leave all that long-" Kane went down heavily, smashed into the ground by a figure moving so fast that even the enhanced senses of the others failed to register before he appeared from the treeline. The man was tall, nude, and his hands ended in long claws. His features were aquiline, almost noble, but marred by his scowl, and the row of sharp teeth that dominated his mouth.

“Oh, fuck.” The breathed curse was atypical of North, but he had been so caught up with the discovery of Marge’s remains and trying to search for more clues that his powers had failed to alert them of the presence of company. Within the space of one heartbeat to the next, he had a gun unholstered and cocked at the now snarling feral’s head. He gestured sharply for Kane to back away and would have opened fire, but – “He is not alone. And I do not think bullets are very effective against them.”

The only thing stopping Kyle from just going straight in was Wade blocking him - he couldn't bowl over the older man and dive in to eat this man - guy - thing's? face. His lip curled in a snarl, and he met the other feral's eyes for a bare second and then his head whipped around. "One more, just outside of sight. Over there." He pointed with an entire hand, claws out - and shaking with suppressed anger.

Wade had gone for his weapons as soon as North had and he held them pointed toward the spots where no one was standing, where he might actually have a chance to hit something if it came after them. Stepping toward Kane as the other Canadian picked himself up, Wade looked toward Logan. "Right, you think you and your shiny accessories can take 'em?" Anything that had North cursing and not acting while threatened had the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end.

Logan growled low when he got a good look at what had taken Kane down. The scent that had been dogging his memory the entire hike up here finally had a source. The guy was completely and utterly feral, with no sign of humanity in his eyes at all. Random sequences of memories kept flickering through Logan's head overlaying reality. He shook his head twice and started breathing through his mouth. The combination of the two scents was making his head swim. He slid his claws out as he flicked his gaze over the scene, keeping a wary eye out for the appearance of the other one. "Better odds one on one so this ain't gonna end up pretty. Best I'm gonna be doin' is buyin' you time to get outta here. Can't promise you more."

"That's enough of this." Kane twisted and threw a punch capable of smashing concrete into the feral's leg. But even with his preternatural speed, it didn't come close to connecting. Instead, the clawed hands tore through the muscles of his upper arm. Garrison reared back, stumbling away from the shock of the blow.

"Fuuuuck." Kyle breathed out the word, barely audible as he ducked under Wade's extended arms - but not to fight. Even numbed by grief and rage, he wasn't stupid enough to go against someone who'd just shredded Garrison's arm. Hours of Danger Room training kicked in - get out of the way and get somewhere he could get high and jump down on top of an opponent and out of the path between stronger teammates and people he couldn't handle. He moved to give the mercenary room to fire and to get far away from the path between Logan and the feral man who had just torn up Kane.

Despite Kyle's efforts to get out of the way, Wade still didn't have a shot he was willing to take and his hesitation earned him a brutal slash across the back that left him half-muttering, "Son of a bitch, I fucking hate speedy people."

The first gunshot rang out, followed swiftly by a second and third. They hit the mark, right on target, the sound of metal against flesh sounding in sensitive ears.

But North did not stick around to see how useless his bullets had been against the feral. It got the thing off of Kane, but it was very obvious that the projectiles were pretty much useless in slowing down their attackers, much less stopping them. With that in mind, the German man leapt up into a tree and scrambled skywards, finding no shame in using Logan as an intermediary diversion.

The unnamed feral was on Logan before he took more than a breath and he barely got his claws up in time. Usually he had the advantage or at least was evenly matched. Not now. He was having a hard enough time preventing himself from being shredded as it was. Defense was never his strong suit and he couldn't do much more than scratch the insane beast back. He snarled low and fought harder to keep the feral off the rest of them before the other one showed up.

"Move, move!" Garrison was holding his arm as he started the retreat towards the building. Their only hope was to put steel and concrete between them and the two ferals. Otherwise, they'd be the next ones in the cooking pot.