Chapter 78 77
***
Subject X-23 sat in her room — her cell — and watched two figures arguing on the other side of the barred exit. Her "handler," Madam Kimura, and a tall, gray-haired man she called "the Colonel."
"She'll manage. I have full confidence in her training. All she needs is the target, the location, and the time."
"You understand that failure isn't an option?" the Colonel replied, scowling. "We won't get another chance to get close to Him. And if this mission fails, our heads roll. Your indestructible hide won't save you this time — they have ways to deal with someone like you."
"Don't try to scare me. Better men than them have broken themselves on my hide," Madam Kimura said with a flash of irritation. "What worries me more is the part where we frame that student. Who's going to believe he's capable of taking down Him and all his bodyguards? It's absurd."
"Remember Egypt," the Colonel replied. "Back then everyone also thought it was absurd that a country could be seized by a handful of schoolchildren."
"Don't conflate the two. Creed had thousands of those 'schoolchildren' there. And he commanded them — he wasn't personally storming anything. And what guarantee do we even have that this is the same Creed, and not just someone who shares the name? It's become a fairly common surname lately," Kimura said, wrinkling her nose.
"Let's come at it from another angle, then," the Colonel said with a smirk. "Why do you believe your charge is capable of killing Him and all of his bodyguards?"
"Because she is a highly effective weapon, built and honed specifically for this," Kimura said with confidence. "And on top of that, she's a mutant — a physical type. At close range, those bodyguards don't stand a chance against her. 'Supers' or not, that's not enough. Your job is to make sure the extraction is solid. X-23 will need to be out of the country immediately after this, and that's not a small thing."
"Don't worry, the extraction route is already prepared. You'll receive the detailed plan as soon as the time and location of the operation are confirmed," the Colonel waved off. "The clients are completely convinced this is the same Creed. Whether anyone else believes it doesn't matter much. What matters is removing him from the board before he repeats his 'field trip' on the scale of the entire Union. And he can. His Federation has more than forty million 'supers,' and the fact that only a quarter of them are over eighteen doesn't make things easier."
"Easier… it would be easier to just kill them both," Kimura said sourly, crossing her arms.
"Maybe. Though it's not that simple — our client is terrified of this Creed down to his bones. And in that case, who do we pin the killing on? Who takes over as Head of the Federation? And how do they behave once the power struggle erupts into chaos? This way, there's even a chance to shut the Federation down entirely. Disband it, declare it illegal. But none of that concerns us. Our job is specific: get X-23 to Moscow, wait for His meeting with Creed, wait for it to conclude, and on His way back from that meeting, eliminate Him and any witnesses, leaving Creed's machete — the one we've supplied — at the scene. Clear and specific. No room for interpretation. So, I'll ask again: will she manage it? Or do we need additional personnel?"
"She'll manage it," Kimura said firmly.
***
This was her first assignment. But it couldn't be said that X-23 felt any nerves about it. After the conditioning she'd endured under Madam Kimura's… tutelage, X-23 was incapable of feeling anxious over something this trivial. If anything, the "assignment" felt easier than Madam Kimura's usual "training sessions." At the very least, a full day had already passed and she still wasn't in pain, and her body remained whole and unbroken.
The job itself went smoothly enough. Arrival in the city. Settling into a safehouse. Waiting. Then a courier arrived with the location and time of the meeting. And nearly a full day to study the area, the building, the entry and exit routes. Almost more time than she needed.
But once she was in position, nothing went according to plan. Everything went too well. The elimination target ended up alone with the man meant to be framed — without bodyguards, without witnesses, in an enormous reading room. X-23 couldn't let an opportunity like that pass. She waited for the conversation between the two to end, for the target to head toward the exit, putting more than fifty meters between himself and the man being framed, and turn the corner — landing directly beneath one of the ventilation shaft openings where X-23 was hiding. A silent drop. A single fast sweep of one claw, cleanly severing the target's head. Then catch the body before it could hit the ground and make noise, dip the supplied machete in the blood, and leave it on the floor.
After that, get clear of the area — fast — because once the body was discovered, things were going to get ugly.
Everything had gone smoothly. Too smoothly. Except for one thing: the man the target had been meeting with. He frightened X-23 more than Madam Kimura did. And it wasn't a fear rooted in reason. It was instinctive, bone-deep. He registered to her as some massive, powerful predator. As an alpha — the kind you didn't even dare look at directly, for fear of provoking it. So X-23 hadn't looked. She trusted her instincts. And her instincts had been screaming one word: danger. So loud that the hair on her body had stood on end, and every fiber of her had wanted to drop to its belly and crawl away.
But X-23 had completed the assignment. The target was eliminated. She made her exit through the ventilation system again — though not through the main shaft this time, but through a vent leading into an office a couple of rooms down from the library. There, she dropped out of the duct and, through sheer force of will to keep herself from breaking into a run, made her way toward the building's exit, and then off the university grounds entirely.
But with every passing minute, her unease climbed higher. The sense of approaching danger kept swelling. The feeling of a Storm bearing down on her, hot on her heels, became unbearable — and it made her quicken her pace, again and again. She swung onto the seat of a motorcycle that had been left ready for her, pulled on the helmet, and tore off, away from the university. Faster. Away from this place, from this maddening threat chasing her down, breathing on the back of her neck.
***
I snapped at the people frozen in shock around me, and the bark was enough to shake them out of their stupor. Then I turned to the wall with the barred ventilation grille and drew in a deep breath, pulling in as much air as I could.
The killer's scent was still there. Still there, but fading. And if I wanted to catch them — *her*, the scent made that much unmistakably clear — there was no time to waste.
"And you, Viktor Ivanovich?" Natasha asked, as if she'd already worked something out from my behavior.
"I'm going in after the trail. Make sure nobody gets in my way," I told her, without turning around, without opening my eyes — my entire focus narrowing down onto the trail of my prey. The hunting instinct was beginning to roar to life inside me.
"Going *in*?! But that's—" Whatever she'd meant to say went unfinished, because at that moment I extended the claws on my fingers and toes, tearing my shoes apart in the process. I no longer cared. The hunter had woken up. God, how much I'd missed this in the years since. The saber-tooth — a predator. Not livestock, not a guard dog, not some "Zen-Enlightened Master." A predator. And a predator needed a hunt. And blood.
I leapt from where I stood straight onto the wall, sinking my claws into it. They bit into the concrete easily, cracking it, crumbling it apart. I had enough strength that not just my claws but my fingers themselves sank into the concrete, gouging into its solid mass.
I climbed the wall to the ventilation opening and, with an irritated swipe, tore off the grille. Then I started ripping into the wall itself — digging, tearing, breaking it apart, widening myself a passage — under the thoroughly stunned stares of everyone present. Especially the Rector, who had, for some reason, chosen exactly this moment to come back.
They didn't get much of a show, though — the whole process of widening the hole took maybe five seconds at most. Then I vanished into the breach, finding myself in the adjoining room, which turned out to be a library storage area. I didn't drop to the floor. I kept crawling along the ceiling, cosplaying Spider-Man — well, why not? My flexibility and reach were more than enough for that kind of trick, to say nothing of the strength and durability of my claws. My clothes, admittedly, were already splitting at the seams and starting to come apart, but when had something that minor ever bothered me?
I obviously wasn't going to fit inside the ventilation duct itself, no matter how badly I wanted to, but I didn't need to. I simply ripped it open — tore it apart, occasionally peeling off entire sections and tossing them down below. The only thing that mattered was reaching the scent — that thin thread of a trail running along the duct. Reaching it, and not losing it.
And I didn't lose it. It's hard to put into words, but the longer this went on, the more I surrendered to my animal instincts, sliding into some kind of trance-like, meditative state. The trail kept growing brighter and sharper, until — in my perception — it glowed like something lit from within by a powerful laser. There was no losing it, even if you tried.
The storage room ended, and the duct ran into a wall. I did to that wall exactly what I'd done to the last one, without a single moment's hesitation. Except this time, instead of an empty office or storeroom or supply closet, the other side turned out to be a classroom — mid-lecture.
At my rather dramatic entrance, everyone fell silent, shrank back, and froze, too afraid to move under the gaze of a massive, beastly man hanging from the ceiling, crumbling concrete beams apart with his fingers. Honestly, a pretty reasonable reaction to the situation.
I gave a brief growl, just for good measure, then ignored them entirely and kept crawling along the trail, continuing to tear open and rip apart the ventilation duct the way a dog digs out a mouse hole.
"Sensei!!" The joyful, energized shout of one of the students pulled my attention. I turned my head toward him. "You're back, Sensei!" he added, noticing my reaction.
"I'm back," I told him. "Get back to your lesson. I'll be at the Federation tonight. I'll be speaking. Everyone needs to be there."
"Yes, Sensei!!" he answered, even more enthusiastically, and I kept crawling. The next wall wasn't far off. It met the same fate as the last one. Thankfully, the room beyond it was empty — and that was where the trail left the ventilation system. So, naturally, I left it too.
I ran through the halls of the institute building, people scattering out of my way, practically plastering themselves to the walls, trying to melt into them — anything to avoid catching my eye. Honestly, at this point I couldn't even say whether I was running on two legs or four.
At the exit, a cordon had already been set up, holding people inside the building. And Natasha was there too — she'd figured out exactly where to redirect her attention first. She was waving her credentials around and barking orders. The main one being: let the terrifying thing currently barreling toward you through, before it scatters you in pieces.
They let me through.
I followed the trail out of the university grounds and onto the road. And the trail didn't disappear. I could still "see" it just as clearly, even though there was no possible way it could still be a scent at this point. No scent could survive conditions like these, with the prey no longer moving on its own two feet but on some fairly quick piece of transportation. And yet I kept "seeing" it. That trail, and thousands of others. My perception had shifted quite drastically since slipping into that trance state. I was experiencing the world differently. Not as a human. But that wasn't a problem. I honestly didn't care either way.
I ran along the road, following the trail of my prey. Fast. Overtaking cars, weaving around them, leaping over them, sometimes jumping onto the roofs of cars and buses and bounding from one to the next. None of it mattered — I wasn't even thinking about what I was doing. The only thing that mattered was the trail, growing brighter and sharper with every passing second. I think, at some point, I was even "teleporting" along the way.
I was closing the gap on the runaway.
***
X-23 was wringing every last bit of speed out of her motorcycle that the machine had to give. She'd stopped thinking about traffic laws, about staying inconspicuous, about not drawing attention. She wasn't thinking about anything anymore. Her instincts were screaming that she was being hunted. That she was being caught. That something behind her — something so terrifying she couldn't even consider stopping — was closing in, following her trail.
At one point, she couldn't help herself, and looked back.
She looked back, and saw the Beast — leaping from car to car, racing along her trail at a speed that simply shouldn't have been possible.
That single glance was enough. X-23 never wanted to look back again. She wrung even more speed and power out of her motorcycle, even though, just a moment ago, it had seemed like the bike had nothing left to give.
And then, in the next instant, the world went dark.
When X-23 opened her eyes again, she was already lying on the asphalt. She opened them and immediately sprang to her feet in a movement drilled into her through countless hours of training. She even extended the claws on her hands, ready to fight.
It didn't help. The world spun.
Or rather, *she* was spinning — sent flying through the air by a swipe of the Beast's clawed hand, the Predator that had finally caught up to her. The flight, admittedly, was short. It ended at the wall of the nearest building, into which she was driven — and through which she was driven, the wall caving in around her.
X-23 crashed through the breach and into the room beyond. She tried to scramble back to her feet, but didn't get the chance. A weight came down on her back from above, pinning her flat against the floor, holding her down so she couldn't rise.
And then, both her arms were wrenched behind her back and bound together at the elbows with a length of rebar — rebar the Beast had simply torn straight out of the concrete ceiling slab above, plunging his hand into it to pull it free. X-23 watched it happen from the floor, eyes wide with horror, not even daring to imagine what kind of strength it would take to do something like that. And do it that easily.
"Cooo-ool!!" drawled a small boy, maybe five years old, sitting on the couch in the room. "I wanna do that too!"
"Join the Martial Arts Federation! Take up Kung Fu!" the Beast told the kid, flashing a brilliant, blinding "Hollywood smile" like some guy out of a TV commercial, and gave him a thumbs-up. Which completely shattered whatever was left of X-23's understanding of how the world worked.
"Mom!!! I wanna join the Mar-shul Arts Fed-er-ay-shun!" she heard the kid's voice trailing off behind her. After that, she closed her eyes and let her head sink down onto the broken bricks.
***
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