Chapter 32: Project Chimera and a Channel Crossing
The fall of France in June 1940 fundamentally altered the calculus for Elias Thorne. Britain stood alone, battered but defiant, against the seemingly invincible Nazi war machine. Canada, though geographically distant, was now a critical lifeline, its industries, resources, and manpower more vital than ever. For Elias, this global crisis was the ultimate proving ground, a crucible in which to forge his influence and test the limits of his power.
His immediate priority became Project Chimera – the code name he assigned to the covert deployment of James "Logan" Howlett into Nazi-occupied Europe. This wasn't about official military enlistment; Logan would never tolerate it, and his existence was a secret Elias guarded jealously. Instead, Logan would operate as a deniable asset, a ghost in the war machine, targeting specific high-value objectives that conventional forces couldn't reach or wouldn't risk.
"You won't be wearing a uniform, Logan," Elias explained in their Westmount apartment, the radio muttering grim updates from across the Atlantic. "You won't be taking orders from colonels. You'll be taking them from me. Your targets will be specific: disrupting critical enemy infrastructure, eliminating key Nazi personnel involved in... unconventional research, perhaps even some 'search and rescue' for individuals of interest who find themselves on the wrong side of the swastika."
He was carefully framing it as surgical strikes, appealing to Logan's nascent desire for purpose and his deep-seated hatred of bullies and oppressors, a trait Elias had begun to discern beneath the layers of rage and trauma.
Logan listened, his expression unreadable, polishing one of his adamantium claws with a whetstone he'd inexplicably produced, the rasping sound a counterpoint to Elias's calm voice. "Sounds like you want a one-man wrecking crew, kid. Just point me at the jackboots." His loyalty had ticked up to [33% (Directed Violence as Purpose – Trust Still Minimal)] after the successful "problem-solving" assignments.
"Precisely," Elias affirmed. "But a smart wrecking crew. Your strength and healing are assets, Logan, but your senses, your tracking ability, your capacity for stealth when you choose... those are what will make you invaluable."
Getting Logan into Europe was the first challenge. Commercial travel was out. Military transport was too restrictive. Elias turned to his growing network of black market contacts, now refined and expanded by Mickey O'Halloran's increasingly sophisticated operations and funded by Elias's burgeoning industrial wealth. He needed a submarine. Not a military one, but one of the rogue U-boats or independent blockade runners that occasionally operated for exorbitant prices, ferrying high-value goods or wanted individuals across the U-boat-infested Atlantic. It was incredibly risky, phenomenally expensive, but it offered the best chance of a discreet, untraceable insertion.
Dr. Finch, applying his formidable intellect to logistical puzzles, helped identify potential contacts through neutral ports like Lisbon and Tangier. After weeks of delicate, high-stakes negotiations conducted through encrypted channels and trusted intermediaries, a deal was struck. An aging, privately owned ex-German U-boat, captained by a mercenary with no allegiances beyond gold, would transport a "specialist consultant" (Logan) and his "liaison" (Elias, under a new, heavily protected alias – Mr. Andre Blanchard, a wealthy Swiss neutral with an interest in "unusual antiquities") to a remote cove on the coast of occupied France.
The journey itself was a tense, claustrophobic ordeal. Logan, cooped up in the damp, reeking confines of the submarine, was a coiled spring of barely suppressed aggression. The constant thrum of the diesel engines, the creak of the hull under pressure, the ever-present threat of depth charges from British destroyers – it wore on even his iron nerves. Elias, sharing the cramped, illicit passage, maintained his outward calm, but inwardly, the experience was a stark reminder of the dangers they were courting. He could feel Logan's internal storm, the psychic residue of his berserker rage pressing against the confines of the steel tube. Elias's own Wolverine-enhanced senses were a curse in the submarine, picking up every foul odor, every groaning metal plate, every subtle shift in the underwater currents, heightening his awareness of their vulnerability.
He used the enforced proximity to subtly attempt further integration with Logan, not through direct conversation, which Logan still largely rebuffed, but by simply existing in the same charged space, letting their mirrored powers resonate. He found he could, with concentration, partially filter some of Logan's more aggressive psionic emanations, bringing a momentary, almost imperceptible calm to the mutant's turbulent mind. It was a delicate dance, a psychic diplomacy conducted in the crushing depths.