Madripoor - 1944

"I wouldn't do that, bub. If I were you."

"Really?" said the man before him, the Egyptian accent of his voice full of indifferent disdain. "Mr Logan, you have been accused of collaborating with the enemy. I'd be more concerned with your life than what I'm about to do."

"Then this is gonna be a long night," growled Logan.

As far as he could tell, it had not been more than a couple hours since he'd been down the Princess Bar, having a rare break from the work of Canuck Intel. The American's hadn't screwed up as much of late, so there wasn't that much bailing out to be done.

Maybe it had been the hour, maybe it had been the fancy stuff Seraph had been giving him to drink, but either way he'd been off his game and he'd been ambushed. Five of them had forced him into an alleyway and given him a kicking from which his healing factor had only just mended his body.

Something had definitely gone wrong and some how he was in the thick of it. Problem was, he didn't know what the problem was and these jackasses thought he did, and they were prepared to go to any lengths to get the information out of him.

"Perhaps," said the agent. "However, as we do know about your 'special talents', your advanced recuperation capabilities, superior sensory perceptions and the like, this may not be as long a night as you think."

"Bring it on, bub," said Logan, pulling at the chains that manacled his hands to the wall. They were almost cutting off his circulation and he knew he couldn't get his hands free and fight his way out. Why had Canuck Intel turned on him? What was going on out there that he had so blatantly missed? The D-Day landings had gone on fine and Germany had retreated. He knew, he'd been there, in his 'official' rank as Corporal. The war was almost over, give or take a year, according to the intelligence chiefs, and after the Normandy landings he'd been given leave for some R&R. So what the hell had gone wrong?

The Xavier Institute, Salem, New York - Present Day

"I hate these things," said Elektra as she sat down, reviewing the screens of information that the computers were giving her. Logan knew the answers had to be in here somewhere, and while he was elsewhere she was going through the files, using the search parameters of World War 2, except that there were literally hundreds of floppy disks with compressed data on them that had made up the security dossier on Logan that had been supplied by the National Security Agency, equaling many, many documents.*

(* As seen in Wolverine #50 - David)

The search had taken about an hour so far, even for the computers in the hands of the X-Men, and now Elektra was carefully refining the search. The X-Men weren't overly happy to have her here while Logan was away but he'd insisted on it and they'd had to accept his call. He was after all one of the team and they trusted him.

Elektra sighed as she looked through some of the discarded files, learning who Logan had been, seeing things in there written about the Weapon X project and what they had done to him to put the adamantium in place, a process that had been refined and attempted once more by Genesis just before Elektra had found Logan and set about her quest to bring him back and put him back on the Path.

As she looked through the files, she saw the selection criteria dated to his work for Canadian Intelligence, and that he had been reactivated after 1950 and had worked for them for three years further before being 'sold' to Team X in America, working for them during the Korean War as the team slowly became established, with Logan and Silver Fox living in the Canadian Rockies, and it was here she found the origin of the real Team X.

SHIELD Helicarrier, Vermont

"Nick, I need to talk to ya!"

"What brings you to SHIELD, Logan?" asks my old pal, Nick Fury. There have been times when I've gotten on board with some kind of dramatic poise. This time I just broke on board with ease and waited for Nick in his quarters. "And why ain't I gonna call security and toss yer behind off this thing?"

"Because that'd get messy," I answer and he can see in my eyes I'm not in the mood for games.

"What can I do for you?" he says, sitting down.

"What do you remember about the closing days of the war, when I was in Intel and you were doin' yer Howling Commandos routine?"

"A fair bit. Why'd you ask?"

"What d'ya remember about me and what I did?"

"Yer portfolio not give you any answers?" he asks, thinking back to the last time I asked him something like that.

"Words can be wrong, files altered, events missed out. I want to know from someone who was there, someone who knew me. Because I'm missing a chunk o' memories and I ain't sure why or what went down."

"What do you mean?" asked Fury.

"I mean why was I a corporal when I was a spy? Why was it when I worked for Department H, I was automatically ranked as a Captain and what happened in between me getting promoted and getting side tracked at Team-X?"

"You don't ask the easy ones, do ya?" said Fury, lighting up a cigar. "The Corporal one is easy enough to answer. In 1942, you and I were at a meetin' in London. I was a Sergeant and you were just another spook. There was a special job behind the lines, but it needed someone with a rank. You were one of the best and it was decided that you'd get the rank of Corporal in the British Navy. US Intel provided the knowledge, Canuck Intel provided the body, British Intel provided the means."

"What was the mission?"

"To get the German plans so that we could liberate Egypt. Thing was you did so well and you were one of the best fighters, so you were sent out to train resistance groups so that we could get on with the job."

"Why can't I remember this?" His words seem to fit but I can't place them and there's something definitely missing.

"That I don't know, though there was that business in Madripoor just after Normandy. You vanished for a bit and the next we heard of you was in Japan with MacArthur." My instincts are raised at the mention of that. Time and time again it comes back to Madripoor. It could be anyone, Hand, HYDRA, anyone at all. "You'll probably find your answers there."

"Great, been a while since I visited Viper," I answer with a sigh. Ever since this came down in Greece, I've not been feeling like myself. Now I gotta go into the heart of my wife's territory. Madripoor ain't what it was, and I ain't really welcome anymore but I need the answers.

"Say hi for me," he chuckles without humour as he escorts me down the corridor and hands me over to a couple of agents who see me off the premises. I gotta get back to Elektra, see if she's found anything of interest.

The Xavier Institute, Salem, New York

As Elektra read on she discovered that the role of Team X had changed after the assassination of Kennedy, and the governments grew more paranoid about the USSR. Changes were ordered to Team X, changes that became more than ethics would allow. Team-X were to be genetically enhanced, to have their bodies and minds altered and changed so that the most effective spy force the USA had became the most effective covert operations team the US had ever had. The Team-X Project as it was called in the initial phase was altered and it became the Weapon X Project, funded by American dollars and operated in Canada.

The original proposal was to have a number of mutants pulled from the general public and enhanced, trained, and made ready to be super-soldiers to go against whatever the Soviet and Eastern Block powers would throw at them. However that original proposal had eventually been abandoned, as they knew where they could get their recruits. Team-X had been operating successfully for several years now. Mind wiping them all and convincing the world they had all died in an operation gone wrong had been the easy part. Making them ready for a new world had been harder, though a mysterious backer had supplied plenty of help and advice in how to proceed.

Logan had been the first to be enhanced and to have the false memories implanted by Aldus Ferro, then Sabretooth, then Mastodon, then Silver Fox, then Wraith, and finally Maverick. Each had been enhanced in several ways. Logan had been given the adamantium implants because only his healing factor was capable of handling the stresses placed upon his body. Having his mental restraints removed had enhanced Victor Creed and they had gone further by advancing his own mutant abilities so he was faster, stronger, and could go for longer than he had before. Enhancing them to this degree allowed his mutation to grow and for his claws to become a permanent part of his anatomy, removing his ability to reshape his fingernails.

Mastodon had been given the anti-aging factor, keeping him a state of perpetual youth, a state where he was in the prime of his life, with an added bonus of making him a receptor for solar radiation, allowing him strength far in advance of the others and of any known metahumans at that time. Yet it was the suppression of the aging factors that had been the greatest result and that allowed the others that followed to have the serum implanted in them as well.

Silver Fox was next and had been made more durable, her Native American Indian beliefs being the basis used for the enhancement of her natural attributes by adding animal extracts to her. These gave her the raw strength and power of the grizzly bear, the eyes and grace of the hawk, and the ears and sense of smell of the grey wolf. These enhancements made her like the two Canadians, except without the benefits of a healing factor or natural claws.

Wraith had been enhanced so his mutagenic signature would not show up on any scan and that his teleportation powers were silent, instant and undetectable. His talents had not been as a fighter such as the other members of the Team but as the Expediter, the man who got them in and out of the missions, the man who gave and took the orders.

Finally there was Maverick, a German added to the team originally as a means to appease their European allies but a German to remind them that the Americans were in control here. And though the existence of Team-X was known to only a few people, it said that the American government did not care what had gone on, and that the Germans were a tool to be used as any other. Maverick's mutant ability to absorb any impact had been enhanced and adapted so that his body was more or less invulnerable to all impacts, but there was only one drawback to Maverick's enhancement: that if left unchecked, it would burn up his power as he got older. But the aging suppression saw to that. Flame, cold, and other energy weapons could still harm and kill him, but that was why they had the body armour.

They were Team-X. They were Weapon X. They were an experiment that was doomed not to work. Then the computer bleeped at her and she knew the search on World War 2 was complete.

Royal Palace, Madripoor.

Viper was looking through the old records of Madripoor. As the sovereign ruler of the place, with Tyger Tiger and Jessica Drew under her control*, the country was hers to control. As Madame HYDRA she was a wanted criminal and terrorist but Madripoor gave her haven. It was a place where the normal rules of the world didn't apply and where everyone was welcome, after a fashion.

(* As seen in Wolverine #128 - David)

It was that kind of reputation as well as the laws of the place that kept the country from being invaded during the War, and various opposing groups had met here at one time or another. The Hand had been dealt a vicious blow when she had married Logan and they had tried to convert them as well as Sabretooth and Kitty Pryde, and they had not been heard from on the shores since. It was something, she had heard, that certain members of the Hand had come to regret.

It was looking through these records that she found some very interesting documents pertaining to her husband and his involvement in a conspiracy during the end of the Second World War, and these documents seemed to cast a doubt on his patriotism and loyalty. Could it be that Logan was a traitor, a Nazi who had never been discovered and that all the principles on which he founded his life were a lie? She smiled at the delicious irony.

The documents were incomplete but HYDRA had been Strucker's creation. If the records were anywhere, HYDRA would have them and she would get at the truth. If it wasn't there, then she would invent it. Either way, she had found a way of controlling her estranged husband, and this time he would not escape her.

The Xavier Institute, Salem, New York

The Institute's quiet as I enter and I can tell from the air that there's no X-Men about at the moment, but Elektra's still here. I wonder where everyone is, but I guess I'm one to talk as they all have their own lives to live.

"'Lektra?" I call as I make my way to my room, where I see her sitting there waiting for me. "Hey, darlin'." Thing is as I get close, she doesn't answer and I know there's something wrong. "Darlin'?"

"Logan," she says as I sit on the bed next to her... then she stops as if she's weighin' something up about me. "Logan," she repeats and takes my hand. "I found something in the files. Something that I don't want to believe, something far worse than I ever imagined finding."

"What is it?" I ask and she hands me a printout of one of the reports.

'The prisoner was questioned today about his involvement in the business that cost the Allied powers the original Captain America, his partner Bucky Barnes, and the effort made in sabotaging the war efforts. Evidence was put to the prisoner that he is in fact an Axis agent, turned by the Axis powers in 1942 when he was on a mission for the Allies. Subject Logan eventually confirmed this, and that he had been working not for the Axis powers but for an organisation within the Axis hierarchy known as 'Nth Reich' a group of Nazi supremacists who believe that Hitler and his methods do not go far enough. He revealed that he was also responsible for many atrocities during the war, including mass murders committed using a set of bone claws, which he produced from his wrists. Subject to finding several of the gravesites, some of which are based on US and UK soil, it is the recommendation of this committee that the prisoner is subjected to mind altering devices and made into an agent for ourselves with one goal - the elimination of Hitler and the Nth Reich.

Signed Amahl Farouk.'

"Logan, you were declared a traitor in 1942," says Elektra as she hands me several more pieces of paper, "however you were reconditioned by specialists and it's why you were part of the Weapon X project. Team-X were a bunch of traitors to their countries who had been given one last chance."

"'Lektra," I say, staring at the first sheet of paper. "This is a set-up. I was framed, darlin'."

"How do you know, do you remember?"

"Nope, but I know who's behind this. The Shadow King's an old enemy of the X-Men and Xavier from way back. It's his name at the bottom of this. He's the one who interviewed me. He's the one that made me confess."

"Where is this Shadow King?" she asks, thinking we can get the truth from him.

"A place where nobody can get to him," I answer, thinking of the battle between Phoenix and the Shadow King and how he'd been destroyed.* "Nope, it looks like the place to get answers on this and clear my name is in Madripoor."

(* The events of M2K's Uncanny X-Men #3, or so the X-Men believe - David)

Next issue: Logan and Elektra are Madripoor bound, but who set this operation in motion and why?