Three days.
Seventy-two hours of absolute, unrelenting hell in the frozen meat-grinder of the Canadian wilderness.
There is a misconception about having a healing factor. When you can heal from nearly any injury. people forget that even that kind of power needs something to run on. Cyclops had a universe of kinetic punch energy to power his optic blasts, Jean the Pheonix Force, even Hulk with gamma. Like them, to heal, the body needs fuel. When you're running for three days straight through waist-deep snow, dodging thermal sweeps, and leaping over frozen gorges without a single calorie going into your stomach... the body starts to eat itself.
My Recovery Factor was keeping me alive, but it was cannibalizing my fat stores, my muscle glycogen, and my sanity to do it. Every step felt like my bones were wrapped in barbed wire. My stomach was a hollow, burning cavern.
Behind us, maybe five miles back but closing fast, the hounds were baying. Not actual dogs. Mechanical tracker drones and the heavy, rhythmic thrumming of General Ross's Blackhawk helicopters. They were relentless.
We could have fought.
The Hulk could have turned around and swatted those choppers out of the sky like annoying mosquitoes. I could have waited in the tree canopy and knocked out all of Ross goons in seconds. But we had no energy to run on. We couldn't fight, not like this. Freezing and starved.
So, we ran.
"Keep moving, Bruce," I rasped, my voice a dry rattle in my throat.
Bruce was staggering beside me. He hadn't changed into the big guy since the lodge. Hulk was a massive drain on Banner's physical reserves, and Bruce was just a frail, exhausted human right now. His face was pale, his lips tinged blue, and his breath hitched with every step. I had my arm wrapped around his waist, practically dragging him through the snowdrifts.
"I can't... Logan, I'm empty," Bruce wheezed, his boots dragging. "Just... leave me. Tell him to come out. He can hold them off."
"No," I growled, my grip tightening on his jacket. "We don't use him as a meat shield. He's a part of you, not a weapon you point at your problems. We keep walking. Put one foot in front of the other, doc."
The wind howled, a brutal sub-zero gale that bit right through my leather jacket. But as we crested a steep, rocky ridge, the scent of the air changed. Underneath the ozone and the pine, my nose picked up something miraculous.
Woodsmoke. Charred meat. Stale beer.
"Town," I grunted, a sudden surge of adrenaline cutting through the exhaustion.
Down in the valley below, shielded by a massive ring of ancient evergreens, sat a tiny, miserable-looking logging settlement. It was barely a dot on the map—a collection of rusted trailers, a lumber mill that looked half-abandoned, and a single, large wooden building at the end of a dirt road with a flickering neon sign that read: THE RUSTED ANVIL.
We scrambled down the slope, the sounds of Ross's helicopters fading as the storm clouds rolled in, providing us a desperately needed canopy of cover. They'd lose our thermal signatures in the blizzard. We had a window.
We hit the dirt road, our boots crunching loudly in the quiet night. The town felt deserted, the windows of the trailers dark and boarded up against the cold. The only sign of life was the dull, thumping bass of a jukebox coming from the bar.
I pushed the heavy oak door open, dragging Bruce inside.
The heat hit us like a physical blow. It was magnificent. The bar was a dim, smoky dive, smelling of grease, spilled whiskey, and unwashed bodies. There were maybe a dozen patrons—rough-looking lumberjacks, miners, and trappers huddled around scarred wooden tables. They all stopped talking and stared at us.
We looked like hell. I was covered in dried blood, soot, and snow, my hair wild. Bruce looked like a corpse that had climbed out of a freezer.
I ignored the stares. I walked straight to the long, sticky mahogany bar, hauled Bruce up onto a stool, and slapped a crumpled wad of Canadian hundreds—scavenged from the ruined town—onto the counter.
The bartender, a massive, bald man with a thick beard and a scar running through his left eyebrow, looked at the money, then at me.
"Everything you got in the kitchen," I rasped. "Burgers, steaks, fries. I don't care. Just keep bringing it until the money runs out. And a bottle of your cheapest, strongest whiskey."
The bartender didn't ask questions. He swept the cash into his apron. "Food'll be out in ten. Drink's right here." He slammed a dusty bottle of rye and a glass down in front of me, then handed Bruce a massive pitcher of water.
Bruce drank the water like he was trying to drain a lake, his hands shaking so hard water spilled down his chin.
I popped the cork on the whiskey with my thumb and didn't bother with the glass. I took a long, burning swig straight from the bottle. The cheap alcohol hit my empty stomach like a lit match, but the calories were instantly hijacked by my healing factor. I felt a micro-tear in my calf muscle stitch itself closed. It was a start.
Ten minutes later, the food arrived. Four massive, greasy cheeseburgers, a plate of burnt ends, and a mountain of fries.
Any other time I would savor it, after all I was a burger fanatic in my past life. But I could barely think straight, so I tore into the food with a feral intensity, practically unhinging my jaw. I didn't even taste it; I just inhaled the food like a vaccume, feeling the fire in my belly roar back to life.
Bruce ate slower, but with an equally desperate hunger. The color was slowly returning to his cheeks.
"We made it," Bruce whispered, wiping his mouth with a napkin. "I didn't think we were going to."
"Ross is persistent, but he ain't a tracker," I mumbled around a mouthful of fries. "He relies on tech. In this weather, tech freezes. We got a few hours before they establish a grid search. We eat, we sleep for three hours in the back, then we steal a truck and head for the border."
"Westchester," Bruce said, the name sounding like a prayer. "You really think this Xavier guy can help? Can he actually reach into my mind and... and talk to him?"
"Charles is the most powerful telepath on the planet," I said, taking another pull from the whiskey bottle. "If anyone can help you broker a permanent peace treaty with the big guy, it's him. And me? I made a promise, to get back and i'll keep it."
" To Rogue right, you were telling me about her yesterday. She must mean alot to you, if you're fighting this hard to see her again." Bruce smiled at me, and I couldn't deny it. I've always loved Rogue back in my past life, infact she was one of my top 5 favourite Marvel females. And even now, in this life. I feel a bond with her, something that motivates me to fight. It's kinda like how I felt when I first saw Jean and Storm in this world. Not that i'd tell anyone else that.
" Yeah yeah, just shut up and finish your food." He chuckled at that, I got to admit. It felt nice living my life one day at a time, with a male friend who I could relate to.
We were just starting to feel human again. The tension in my shoulders was finally uncoiling. The jukebox was playing an old, scratchy country song. For a brief, shining moment, it felt like we were just two guys in a bar, escaping the cold.
BANG!
The heavy oak doors of the bar were thrown inward with such force that one of the hinges snapped. The wind howled through the breach, bringing a flurry of snow and a blast of sub-zero air that killed the warmth of the room instantly.
A man stumbled through the doorway, collapsing onto the hardwood floor.
He was a mess. He was wearing a heavy winter parka that had been shredded to ribbons. His face was a mask of frostbite and terror, pale and slick with frozen tears. His hands were covered in blood—not his own—and his eyes were wide, dilated, staring at something that wasn't there.
"Help..." he croaked, his voice cracking, a pathetic, desperate sound that cut through the silence of the bar like a razor. "Please... somebody... God, somebody help me!"
The jukebox ground to a halt as the bartender pulled the plug behind the counter. The lumberjacks and miners stood up, chairs scraping violently against the floor.
A man in a heavy flannel shirt rushed forward, dropping to his knees beside the sobbing figure. "Tom? Jesus Christ, Tommy, what happened to you? You were supposed to be up at the ridge!"
Tom grabbed the man by the collar, his bloody fingers leaving smears on the flannel. He was hyperventilating, his chest heaving violently.
"They took them," Tom sobbed, his voice rising to a hysterical screech. "They took Sarah. They took my girls. My babies! Lily... she was crying, Dave. She was crying for me!"
Dave tried to hold Tom's shoulders down. "Whoa, whoa, slow down, man. Who took them? We were just chatting like 2 hours ago, I said goodbye to your girls. What happened !?"
"IT TOOK THEM!!!!!" Tom screamed, his eyes rolling back in his head. He thrashed on the floor, the memory tearing him apart from the inside out. "It wasn't an animal! It stood on two legs! But it wasn't a man... Oh God, the smell! It smelled like dead meat and old blood. And it was so fast. It was white... so white... and it had antlers."
The temperature in the bar seemed to drop another twenty degrees.
I felt it before I saw it. The shift in the room. The air grew thick, suffocating.
The rugged, hardened men in the bar—men who spent their lives wielding chainsaws and blasting rock, men who drank cheap whiskey and brawled for fun—went completely, deathly still. All the color drained from Dave's face. He let go of Tom's collar and slowly backed away, wiping his hands on his jeans as if the blood on them was cursed.
"The beasts," Tom whispered, curling into a fetal position on the floor, burying his face in his hands. "The white beasts in the snow. The walkers."
Panic exploded. Mass hysteria, everyone lost it.
A massive lumberjack in the corner grabbed his coat, kicked his chair over, and bolted for the back exit. "I ain't staying!" he yelled. "I ain't being here when it follows the blood!"
That was the spark. The entire bar descended into sheer chaos. Men shoved each other out of the way, scrambling for the doors. Glasses shattered as tables were overturned. They were running like cattle fleeing a slaughterhouse. There was no logic, no coordination, just blind, absolute terror. Within thirty seconds, the bar was completely empty, save for me, Bruce, the bartender, and Tom, who was still rocking back and forth on the floor, praying under his breath.
Bruce looked at me, his green eyes wide with confusion. "Logan... what just happened? What did he say?"
Comic book knowledge flared in the back of my brain like a warning siren. White fur. Antlers. Canadian wilderness. The smell of rotting meat. A cold spike of dread drove itself right into my spine. I knew exactly what was out there in the dark.
I slowly stood up from the stool, the exhaustion forgotten. My feral senses extended outward, trying to pierce the blizzard outside, searching for that specific, blood coated scent. But the wind was too strong, any kind of trail this man left behind was already long gone.
I looked at the bartender. Mac. He hadn't run. But he was standing completely still behind the bar, one hand resting on the polished mahogany, the other gripping the handle of a sawed-off shotgun under the counter. His knuckles were white.
"You didn't run, Mac," I said, my voice a low rumble.
Mac stared at the shattered front doors, listening to the howling wind. "Running don't do no good," he said, his voice hollow. "If the Wendigo marks you, you're already dead. You're just walking meat."
Bruce stepped forward. "Wendigo? What is that? Some kind of local predator? A myth?"
Mac finally tore his eyes away from the door and looked at Bruce. He poured himself a shot of whiskey, his hand trembling slightly, and downed it in one gulp.
"It ain't a myth, mister," Mac said quietly. "It's a curse. The oldest one we got up here in the deep north."
I pulled out my last cigar, struck a match against the bar, and lit it. "Tell him," I ordered.
Mac leaned heavily against the counter, the shadows of the flickering neon sign casting long, skeletal shapes across his face.
"You gotta understand the cold up here," Mac began, his voice taking on the rhythmic, hypnotic cadence of a man telling a ghost story he knows is entirely true. "This ain't city cold. This is the kind of cold that freezes the sap in the trees and makes the rocks crack. It drives men mad. And back in the old days, when the snows came early and the passes were blocked... folks starved."
Tom let out a soft, whimpering sob from the floor, but Mac ignored him, his eyes distant.
"When the hunger gets bad enough," Mac continued, "when your belly is eating itself and you're watching your family fade away to skin and bone... a man will do terrible things to survive. He'll look at the person sleeping next to him and stop seeing a friend. He'll start seeing meat."
Bruce shuddered, pulling his coat tighter. He knew about monsters inside a man's mind, but this was a different kind of darkness entirely.
"The Native tribes around here, the Cree and the Algonquin, they warned the settlers," Mac said, his voice dropping to a whisper. "They said the spirits of the forest are watching. If a man partakes in the flesh of another human being in these woods, he breaks the most sacred law of nature. The spirits don't forgive that. They curse him."
Mac pointed a thick, calloused finger toward the howling blizzard outside.
"The curse twists them. It strips away everything human. The man dies, and what wakes up is the Wendigo. It grows. Eight, nine feet tall. Its skin stretches so tight over its bones it looks like wet parchment. It loses its lips, so its teeth are always showing, always starving. It grows antlers from its skull, a crown of brittle bone to mock the forest it defiled."
The bar was silent, save for the wind and the crackle of my cigar. The hair on the back of my neck stood up. I had lived a hundred and fifty years of war, but the sheer, haunting terror in the bartender's voice was enough to chill even adamantium bones.
"But the worst part ain't the way it looks," Mac whispered, leaning closer. "It's the hunger. A Wendigo is the embodiment of starvation. No matter how much it eats, it's never full. Every bite of human flesh only makes it bigger, faster, and hungrier. And it's smart. It don't just hunt; it hunts with cruelty."
Tom suddenly sat up, his eyes wide and vacant. "It sounded like Sarah," he croaked, his voice cracking. "I was gathering firewood. I heard Sarah calling me from the deep woods. She said she was hurt. But Sarah was in the tent. I turned around... and it was standing over the campfire. It didn't have her face... but it had her voice. It perfectly mimicked her voice while it... while it..."
Tom broke down completely, burying his face in his hands, unable to finish the sentence.
"It plays with its food," Mac finished grimly. "It mimics the voices of the people you love. It calls to you in the dark, sounding like your child crying for help, or your wife begging you to come outside. It lures you into the freezing black, and then it takes its time. It's a ghost made of razors and famine."
Mac grabbed the shotgun from under the counter and laid it on top of the bar. "That man's wife and daughters are gone. If they were taken alive, it's only because the beast wants to store them in its larder. A cave somewhere in the ice, where it can listen to them scream for days before it starts eating."
Bruce took a step back, his face completely pale. He looked at me, horror etched into every line of his face. He had spent his whole life terrified of being a monster. But the Hulk was an infant throwing a tantrum compared to the cold, calculated, ancient malice of a Wendigo.
"Logan..." Bruce whispered. "Four and five years old."
I didn't say anything. I looked down at my hands and then I was looking at the broken father weeping on a dirty barroom floor. Remembering a little girl in a yellow raincoat buried under the rubble of a town we failed to save. I was remembering the smell of blood and the bitter taste of regret. And my promise.
I reached up and pulled the cigar from my mouth. I crushed the cherry against the mahogany bar, the ember sizzling out into a thin wisp of grey smoke.
I looked at Bruce. The fear in his eyes was slowly being replaced by something else. A deep, simmering emerald light. Looks like the big guy's ready to throw down. Good.
"Bruce," I rumbled, my voice dropping an octave, vibrating with the feral rage that was boiling in my marrow. "You still hungry?"
Bruce Banner unzipped his parka and let it drop to the floor. The temperature in the room seemed to spike. His muscles twitched, expanding beneath his flannel shirt. He cracked his neck, the sound like a rifle shot in the quiet room.
"I'm starving," Bruce said, his voice echoing with a deep, monstrous bass.
I turned to the bartender. "Mac. Lock the doors behind us. Pour Tom another drink. And don't wait up."
I didn't wait for a response. I turned and walked toward the shattered doorway, stepping out into the howling, freezing void of the Canadian night.
SNIKT.
The adamantium claws slid out of my knuckles, catching the faint moonlight, gleaming with a deadly, beautiful promise.
"Come on, big guy," I growled, feeling the heavy, seismic thud of the Hulk stepping out into the snow beside me. "Let's go show the local wildlife what a real monster looks like."