Elena Ivanova wandered through the streets. It had been a few weeks since her confrontation with Maverick and she'd felt a little alone since the end of their relationship, if they'd ever had one. He'd not written, not called and the only time she'd seen him he dropped a bombshell on her, a bombshell he'd been keeping a secret.

Lying to a telepath was demeaning, but she'd not noticed anything, not suspected, not even guessed. She'd fooled herself for so long, believing that no matter how far they were apart, they'd be able to make it through. For him to say that even though he cared, it wasn't love anymore, if it ever had been had hurt her. It had hurt her more than anything she'd felt, worse even than Sabretooth's claws. Well, maybe there was one thing that had hurt this badly.

She'd promised that she'd never feel again how she felt when she learned how her mother had died, how she'd been killed by an American assassin with no more reason for it than it made him feel good and she'd sworn that she would never feel that pain again. She'd trusted David North with everything she was and would be, and he had betrayed her. It wasn't that he'd ended it, but the way he'd done it. He'd kept what he felt a secret from her and she had thought she had meant more to him than that. Maybe he hadn't wanted to hurt her, but he'd made it worse.

Isabel had tried to make her feel better, but it hadn't worked and the only thing that seemed to help was doing things like this - going out on to the streets and fixing the problems some of her rogue countrymen were doing. The Russian Mafia were starting to become a problem and Isabel was helping her out by getting information and weapons to fight them and eventually she would find a way of lashing out and getting revenge on the men in her life who had wounded her so. She would find a way to wound Maverick as he had wounded her and she had promised that she would kill Sabretooth. She just needed something special and the underworld would have it.

Isabel, she said telepathically, I'm going in.

Good job Dave taught you how to shoot, replied Isabel. Oops, forgot we don't mention to D word.

Just psyche's me up, replied Elena. You must be a seer or something.

Nah, I've watched Charmed too many times. If anything I'm an oracle. Be careful.

Elena cut off the contact and pressed the button on her belt. Body armour grew and moulded itself about her. It was something that Isabel had been working on since Maverick joined SHIELD but he'd not really seen her too much since September 11 when he was looking for information. Now they knew why. She shook her head and prepared the gun and she went in, using her telepathy to sense where the opposition was. In their minds she could sense the phrase Rex Illuminati and she knew she was on the right track.

She knew that this Rex Illuminati was behind most of the organised crime in the city and she had been on the trail of them for a long time, almost as long as they had tried to recruit her to join them. She would find their leader and take him out eventually. The Tsar would fall, and she would achieve something that hadn't yet been accomplished by heroes such as Iron Man or X-Force. Her energy weapons flared as she made her way deep inside the complex and suddenly she realised something was wrong. She couldn't sense anyone or anything in the place. Or outside.

Isabel, she asked, but there was no reply. All she could feel was a sense of static and she wondered what the problem was. Then she heard laughter and she readied her gun, but in flew from her hand.

"My powers are to control the very natural environment, of which magnetism is only a part," said a voice and she knew she was suddenly in trouble.

"The Tsar?" she said, more a statement than a question.

"Yes," said Micah Abanovitch. "And you are Elena Ivanova, daughter of Juliya and Rodion Ivanova, also known as Epsilon Red."

"You know a great deal."

"Your father was KGB and those files can be bought quite easily these days, if you know where to look and who to approach," said Abanovitch. "However, if there is one thing that Russia lacks is a telepath. The Presence perhaps would suffice, however he has not been heard of in a very long time, which leaves you my dear."

"I'll never help you," spat Elena.

"You will," said the Tsar. "Your activities have been of interest to us and we have been watching." He clicked his fingers and a television screen was brought in and in a gesture he used his powers to turn it on. "You recognise your friend?" Elena could see Isabel, and her little girl Maddie and she could see a gun on Isabel. The gun fired and Isabel's brains were splattered across the wall.

"NO!" shouted Elena, slipping in to Russian. "I'll kill you, you bastard."

"Not if you wish to see the child receive the same fate," said Abanovitch. "You cannot affect me with your powers, but I can affect the fate of everyone you hold dear. Join me."

"Yes," whispered Elena, as she tried to dispel the memory of the death of her friend and she added the Tsar to her list.

"I don't think so," said a voice and she looked up. She knew that voice. "Bub."

"Who the hell are you?" thundered the Tsar, as he looked to the shadows and he could see that three of his men lay dead. They'd been killed silently, quickly and in plain view of everyone here, but they'd all missed it.

"My friends call me Logan, you can call me Wolverine."

"The X-Man," muttered the Tsar.

"Not of late," replied Wolverine and he stepped in to the light. "Let her go, or things are gonna get ugly."

"You've no idea of the power I command, little man."

"Actually I caught CNN and yer escape from the Vault. You wanna be the next Magneto, huh?"

"The one foe the X-Men have never been able to stop. In fact the last time you faced him, you managed to gift him a country of his own." Logan's eyes narrowed and the Tsar knew he'd hit a sore spot. "I could kill you in a heartbeat. Magneto never could finish a job properly."

"And that's why he has me," said a voice Elena didn't know, but she could see a gun in the woman's hand and it was right behind the Tsar's head. "Make a move, you die because believe me, you'll only get one of the three people in this room before one of the other two kills you."

"Perhaps," said the Tsar, cool as ice. "However I would not count on it." Rock grew around the woman's legs throwing her off balance and the same was tried on Logan but he moved quickly and the Tsar couldn't hold Logan fast enough with his powers and in an istant Logan was on him, his claws pinning the Russian to the wall.

"Now, yer gonna call off yer people or I'm gonna make sure you breathe without using yer mouth." Elena could feel the fear in the man's mind as his psionic defences were lowered as he focused on something else as well as the claws that kept him covered.

"Or you can release me or your woman dies," replied the Tsar, his tone not betraying his fear and Logan looked to see his partner being covered in the rock and he only had minutes to save her life and if he did that then the Tsar would be on him.

She could sense in his mind what the woman meant to him and he slammed his head in to the Tsar and headed to the mound of Earth and started hacking at it with his claws. The Tsar was hurt but he would shake it off and his people were gathering so she placed herself between them and Logan as they started to fire and the bullets bounced off her armour.

"Take out the Tsar," said Wolverine and she looked at the Russian. He'd killed someone important to her and she would make him pay and she lashed out with her psionic powers to create an illusion that he was the one being shot in the head but she found herself unable to move. The Tsar was back in operation and she had hesitated too long.

"You have become a liability," said Abanovitch as he wiped the blood from his nose. "I will kill you all slowly and have done with it." Elena coughed as she felt the air grow thicker and she realised he was using his powers to displace the oxygen and she couldn't breathe. Logan was slowing down as well, but he almost had his woman free and he would keep going until they ran out of air and the Rex Illuminati all disappeared from the room.

"Going to kill you, Abanovitch," gasped Elena and Abanovitch smiled as he started to walk out of the room. Then there was a gun shot and Abanovitch staggered and fell to the floor and the air began to return to normal.

"Good shot," rasped Logan.

"Lousy shot," said the woman, sweat covering her face as well as scraped and bruises from the rock that had encased her. "I was aiming for the back of his head, not his left lung."

"Either way," said Logan. "Now the bastard dies slower."

"In torment," said Elena and she lifted his head up and looked in to his eyes. "Suffer," she said and in the mind of the Tsar she placed the image of Isabel slowly cutting off his skin with a bowie knife while he could do nothing but watch her helplessly. His mouth opened in a soundless scream and Logan looked down, watching the blood leak from his body.

"I'm guessing he'll bleed to death in about... twenty minutes or so. Give or take," he said casually as he took as cigar from his pocket.

"Not long enough," said Elena. "What are you doing here, Wolverine?"

"Following you," he said. "Tyger Tiger, Elena Ivanova." The two women shook hands. "Now let's go get a drink."

"What about the girl?" said Elena. "Madelynne..."

"Fine, you get a drink, I'll deal with the kid," said Logan and he turned to Tyger Tiger. "Might wanna put in a call to the L's and get a clean up crew to follow me. It won't be pretty."

And to make it more perplexing, now she was more than that. Even though her controller was gone, though most people here figured that meant very dead, she was still alive. From what they had determined, the life that had flowed through her had been dependant on someone else yet she was still going as if the missing piece of her had been put back. It was inconceivable that something like that could happen, even working at Department H. They all knew the stories and had seen the results of what had happened before, but that was due to clones and such and nobody had truly come back from the dead like this before. Not even Dr Hudson, or not really. There was still debate about it.

But whatever had restored her body was seemingly incompatible with her soul, or whatever it was that had been put back in to her and she was deep in a coma. No brain activity other than normal body functions. They had run tests and managed to restore her body so that the robotic parts were masked and she appeared to be as normal as anyone else but it was apparent to everyone that she was not. If it were not for the man who'd brought her here, they'd probably be doing so many other tests on her, but nobody here wanted to cross Wolverine.

"Dr Philips!" called a voice and she looked up. "She moved. Miss Natchios! She moved!" Anyon Philips ran and she ran in to the room very fast, examining the monitors and such. There were definite spikes in the brainwave activity and she checked the woman's pulse. It was stronger than it had been the last time she'd checked it and she smiled.

"She's getting better," she whispered. "This is amazing. We must get hold of Commander Logan."

"I've put a call to the Alpha Complex," said the assistant. "They'd know how to find him." Dr Philips nodded and looked down at the eyes flickering beneath the closed eyelids of the young Greek woman.

"Welcome back, Elektra."

Tyger Tiger looked at Elena Ivanova and she smiled.

"So, yet another young woman who has a history with Wolverine. I wonder how many more he has in his past?"

"I doubt if even he knows," said Elena. "His memories could not be restored. What was done to him..."

"Has been undone," said Tyger. "Everything he is, everything he was, he knows. Now. You did good work but there was another little girl who did better."

"You really have a thing for him, don't you?" said Elena. "I could reach in to your mind and see everything you and he shared..."

"You could," answered Tiger, "but that's not what we're here for. We need you to help rescue his son from a psionic super power."

"His son?"

"Yes," the other woman replied. "A very long story but..."

"Is it the psionic presence I sensed in his mind before?" asked Elena. "I always thought it was either Ferro or Xavier, but neither fitted the profile for what had been done to him."

"You knew there was other psionic surgery done to him?" Tyger sipped her margarita. "Interesting. Maybe Logan was right to choose you."

"He chose me? What happened to all the other telepaths he knows?"

"Oddly enough, they're all unavailable, but even if they were he want's them to keep out of this one. If the X-Men were needed he'd call them, but he won't do that."

"And what are you to him?" Tyger nodded and smiled again.

"I'm his Expediter. I make sure his back is covered, and that the resources are in place so he can do what he does. Yes, we have a past, but that's all that is - a past. There's somebody else who holds his heart."

"The mother of his child?"

"No, and I suspect the next time he sees her he'll cut her heart out for what she's done to him and his own. The thing with X-Force was particularly cold, making them all fall for each other like that." She watched as Elena tensed at that and she knew she'd scored another point.

There was just something about the woman, something she didn't like or trust. She seemed to be incapable of dealing with pain properly. She needed revenge, she needed to lash out and show the world she was capable of hurting it as she'd been hurt. Tyger had been the queen of the Madripoor underworld, and while she knew that there were times that lessons had to be taught she also knew that there were times when you had to let it go and that was what needed to be done here. Yes it hurt, but that's what people did. They got hurt and they moved on.

What she had shared with Logan was something she would always treasure and while she would indeed like a moment like that again, she also knew she'd never have it, not while his heart belonged to another and she knew that she would never mean as much to him as someone like Mariko, or Silver Fox. They had been lovers, they would always be friends. She lived with that pain and used it, because she knew if she had ever crossed the line, Logan would have taken her out without hesitation. What he did wasn't always pretty, but he knew the difference between right and wrong. Her cell phone rang and she picked it up.

"Yes... Yes... Thank you." She hung up and looked at Elena. "We just picked up Maddie from the house. The killers were found outside. They were very, very dead. They didn't even get a chance to put up a fight from all accounts. Sliced open, their insides trailed across the floor. The child is being taken to her parents house and the killers... well, it won't be a cover up per se, but someone will pay for her death."

"Thank you," said Elena. "I'm sure Isabel will sleep easier."

"Hope so," said Logan as he arrived besides them.

"There's blood on your collar," said Tyger as she looked at him. "You did some exceptional work."

"Was quicker than they deserve. Kid was barely a toddler and they shot her mom in front of her eyes. No kid needs that and they were laughing. They weren't laughing by the time I finished."

"So you need me," said Elena.

"Yup. Need a tepe who's not normally associated with me. I gotta keep Farouk guessin' and if I'm gonna be takin' on him and a few of his personal guards, I need a time. Last time I went solo he kicked my butt but good and I nearly didn't make it."

"What's in it for me?" Elena asked and Tyger glanced at Logan who borrowed her margarita and drained the glass.

"I'll give you Creed."