The highway was a grey ribbon unspooling beneath the heavy treads of the Harley, blurring into a singular line of motion. The New York countryside was bleeding into the edges of my vision, a tapestry of turning leaves—russet, gold, and dying brown—that signaled the deep set of autumn.
I had been riding for hours. The vibration of the engine between my legs should have been numbing, a constant assault on the nerves that would leave a normal man shaking for an hour after dismounting. But I wasn't a normal man anymore. The vibration just felt like a second heartbeat, a mechanical rhythm that synced perfectly with the dense, heavy thrum of my own pulse.
I leaned into a long, sweeping curve, the footpeg scraping against the asphalt with a shower of sparks that I watched with detached interest in the rearview mirror.
My mind, however, was miles away from the road. It was busy trying to build a spreadsheet of the apocalypse.
Okay, Liam... or Logan... whatever, I thought, the wind tearing the words away before they could leave my lips. You're heading to the Mansion. That's Step One. But what happens after the orientation?
The memories I had absorbed were a chaotic mess of history, but my knowledge from my previous life—the "Wiki-Knowledge"—was structured, categorized, and terrified. I knew too much, and yet, I didn't know enough.
If this was a remix universe, a jagged amalgamation of the comics, the animated series, and the movies, then the threat assessment was a nightmare.
I gripped the handlebars tighter, the leather of my gloves creaking.
Magneto. That was the obvious one. Eric Lensherr. In the movies, he was a tragic extremist. In the comics, he swung between savior and genocidal maniac. In the cartoons, he was usually just trying to sink a submarine or launch a missile. If I walked into the Mansion, was I walking into a war with the Brotherhood immediately?
And then there was Sinister. Nathaniel Essex. The pale-faced, diamond-headed geneticist with a fetish for the Summers bloodline. If this timeline followed the X-Men: Evolution logic, he might be hiding in plain sight. If it was the comics, he was probably already cloning me somewhere in a basement. The thought made the skin on my back crawl, a phantom sensation of needles and scalpels that belonged to the other set of memories in my head.
The Sentinels. Bolivar Trask. Master Mold. The robotic extinction event. That was the ticking clock. In almost every timeline, the giant purple robots were the endgame. If I was here, if I had this System, maybe I could stop so much of the death from happening like in cannon, if I can become strong enough I could change the future of Genosha.
My internal HUD flickered in the corner of my vision, unobtrusive but present.
[STATUS: CRUISING]
[MENTAL STATE: ANALYTICAL / ANXIOUS]
"Shut up," I muttered into the wind.
I continued my mental roll call of marvel horrors. Apocalypse. En Sabah Nur. The first mutant. If he woke up, I needed more than just claws. I needed power. The Brood. Alien parasites that lay eggs in you. Mojo. The interdimensional TV executive. William Stryker.
The name Stryker brought a fresh wave of heat to my chest. That wasn't nerd knowledge. That was memory. That was personal. I could still feel the phantom weight of the water in the tank, the taste of the breathing tube, the sheer violation of what he did to my skeleton.
Okay this may be harder than I originally thought it would be. Because if the Captain America in my memories is anything to go off of, then I may be in for more than just X-men villains.
I shook my head, trying to clear the cobwebs. Focus on the now. Get to Xavier's. Get a uniform. Try not to stab Cyclops. Who may or may not be a teenager.
I took a deep breath, inhaling the crisp air. The smell of the world was so much sharper now. I could smell the ozone of a distant thunderstorm, the diesel fumes of a semi-truck three miles ahead, the decay of fallen leaves, the scent of a dead raccoon in a ditch, the pine sap from the treeline.
It was a symphony of odors, a constant stream of data that my brain processed automatically.
And then, the symphony was interrupted by a discordant, screaming note.
It hit me like a physical blow to the face.
I didn't hear it. I didn't see it. I smelled it.
It was a scent that bypassed my rational brain—the brain that knew about tax returns and comic book continuity—and slammed directly into the lizard brain, the primal cortex that belonged to the Wolverine.
It was a thick, musky stench. Old blood, dried and flaky. Wet fur. The sharp, acrid tang of testosterone and adrenaline. But beneath the animal filth, there was something else. A scent of cheap cigars, gunpowder, and a specific, cloying cologne that hadn't been sold since the 1970s.
My heart didn't just speed up; it seized. A cold, hard knot formed in my stomach, instantly replaced by a furnace blast of pure, unadulterated hate.
The reaction was instantaneous and terrifyingly violent.
My pupils dilated until the world became hyper-bright, hyper-focused. The hair on my arms stood up, pushing against the leather of my jacket. A low, rumbling growl started deep in my chest, a sound I didn't authorize, a sound that wasn't human.
No, Liam thought.
YES, the Beast screamed.
The memories I had integrated earlier—the ones that had felt like a movie—suddenly sharpened into crystal clarity.
I saw a cabin in the Canadian Rockies. I felt the warmth of a fireplace. I heard the snapping of wood.
Then, the door splintering inward.
The silhouette in the doorway. Massive. Hulking. A trench coat that looked like it had been through a shredder.
The laughter. That low, rasping chuckle that sounded like bones grinding together.
"Happy Birthday, Jimmy."
The pain of the beatings. The bar fights where we stood back to back. The firing squads we survived together. The slow, agonizing realization that the person closest to me, the only person who understood what it was to be a monster, was the worst monster of them all.
The scent of Kayla. Not the Silver Fox of the comics, but the Kayla from the memories I had inherited. Her scent mixed with his. The scent of her fear. The scent of her blood on his claws.
The motorcycle swerved.
I hadn't realized I'd yanked the handlebars. The Harley drifted across the centerline, narrowly missing an oncoming sedan. The driver leaned on his horn, the doppler effect of the blare screaming past me.
I didn't care.
I squeezed the brake lever, the rear tire locking up. The bike skidded, rubber screaming against the asphalt, leaving a long, black streak as I fought to keep it upright. I wrestled the heavy machine to a stop on the gravel shoulder, dust billowing up around my boots.
I killed the engine.
Silence rushed in, but it wasn't silent for me. My pulse was thumping in my ears like a war drum. Thump-thump. Thump-thump.
I sat there, straddling the bike, my chest heaving. My hands were gripping the handlebars so hard the metal tubing was beginning to warp under the pressure of my enhanced strength.
[WARNING: ADRENALINE LEVELS CRITICAL]
[WARNING: HOSTILITY DETECTED]
[BERSERKER INSTINCT: RISING]
The System flashed red warnings across my vision, but I swiped them away mentally.
I took a breath. I flared my nostrils, hunting for the scent again.
There.
It was faint, drifting on the wind coming from the deep woods to the east. It wasn't fresh—maybe an hour old, maybe two. But it was unmistakable. He had been here. He had crossed this road.
Was he following me? Was he hunting me? Or was he just drifting, a shark in the ocean of humanity, looking for something to kill?
My knuckles began to itch. That terrible, burning pressure. The anticipation of the Snikt. My body wanted to let the claws out, this time completely with each blade being a foot long and sharp enough to split stone like butter. My body wanted to abandon the bike, abandon the mission to Xavier's, and run into those woods. It wanted to hunt. It wanted to tear. It wanted to settle a score that had been bleeding for a century.
I closed my eyes, fighting for control. I was Liam. I was a rational human being. I was a transmigrator with a plan.
But the voice in my head—the gravelly, angry voice of Logan—was louder.
"He's here," I whispered. The sound was rough, scraping against my throat.
I looked towards the treeline. The shadows seemed to lengthen, taking on the shape of a massive, crouching beast. The psychological weight of the nemesis was heavy. In the games, he was a boss fight. In the movies, he was a rival.
But here, standing on the side of a lonely highway with the scent of his musk in my nose, he was fear. He was the bogeyman. He was the one thing that could actually hurt me.
He was the reason I was alone.
I slowly unclenched my hands from the handlebars. The metal was grooved with the imprint of my fingers.
I didn't scream. I didn't roar. The rage condensed into something colder, something sharper. It settled in my gut like a stone.
I looked at the dark woods one last time, engraving the location into my mind. I wasn't ready. Not yet. Level 1. No skills. No team. If I went into those woods now, I'd be walking into a grave.
But he was out there.
I spat on the ground, a glob of saliva and bile. The word fell from my lips like a curse, heavy with a hundred years of brotherhood and betrayal.
"Victor."
The silence that followed my whisper was heavy, thick enough to choke on. The wind had died down, leaving the roadside stillness amplified. The birds had stopped singing. The insects had ceased their buzzing.
It was the silence of a forest holding its breath.
Then came the feeling. It started at the base of my neck, a prickling sensation that rippled down my spine, making the hair on my arms stand up against the inside of my leather jacket. It wasn't a psychic premonition; it was biology. It was the prey instinct, buried deep in the DNA of every living thing, screaming that a predator was near. But in this body, that instinct was twisted. I wasn't just prey; I was a rival apex predator sensing a challenge.
Snap.
A twig broke. Not behind me, but everywhere at once. The acoustic shadow of something moving faster than a man should be able to move.
I saw the flicker of movement in the periphery—a shadow detaching itself from the trunk of a massive oak tree. It was swift, fluid, and terrifyingly silent for something so large.
"Come on," I gritted out, my hands leaving the bike and instinctively popping the claws. SNIKT. The sound was my only warning.
He didn't walk out. He launched.
A massive blur of tan and black exploded from the brush. I barely had time to turn before the weight of a freight train slammed into my chest.
"OOF!"
The air left my lungs in a violent whoosh. I was lifted off my feet, the Harley knocked sideways with a screech of metal on asphalt, and I was driven backward into the gravel.
Heavy boots pinned my shoulders to the earth. A hand, large and tipped with jagged, yellowing nails, clamped around my throat, squeezing with enough pressure to crush a steel pipe.
I stared up, gasping, into the face of my nightmare.
It wasn't the lumbering giant from the movies. It was the lean, mean, sadistic hunter from X-Men: Evolution. He wore a tattered, heavy trench coat that smelled of wet wool and dried gore. His long, stringy blonde hair hung around a face that was more animal than man—wild, manic eyes, sharp fangs bared in a rictus of hate, and mutton chops that mirrored my own.
Victor Creed. Sabretooth.
"Miss me, Runt?"
His voice was a rasping hiss, dripping with venomous amusement.
He didn't wait for an answer. He raised his free hand, his claws—not metal, but bone-hard keratin—aimed right for my eyes.
Panic, hot and white, flared in my mind. Liam wanted to scream. Logan wanted to kill.
I reacted on pure reflex. I bucked my hips, throwing my weight upward while bringing my own arms up in a cross-block. My metal claws sparked against his natural ones, a shower of orange flint-light illuminating our faces. The sound of adamantium grinding against dense bone was nauseating, like a dentist's drill amplified a thousand times.
"Get... OFF!" I roared.
I twisted my wrists, hooking my claws over his forearms, and ripped outward. Creed hissed, leaning back just enough to avoid being disemboweled, but the distraction was enough. I brought my knee up, driving it hard into his gut. It was like kicking a tree stump, but it winded him enough to loosen his grip.
I scrambled out from under him, rolling across the gravel and springing to my feet in a crouch.
Victor landed gracefully a few yards away, dusting off his trench coat. He didn't look worried. He looked delighted. He licked a drop of blood from a shallow cut on his cheek where my claw had grazed him. The wound was already closing, the skin knitting together before my eyes.
"You've gotten slow, Jimmy," Victor taunted, prowling in a semi-circle around me. He moved with a hunch, his arms hanging low, fingers twitching. "Did the soft life make you forget? Or are you just getting too old for the game?"
I circled opposite him, my claws extended, my breathing heavy. "I ain't playing games, Victor."
He chuckled, a low, wet sound. "We're always playing, little brother. Every year. Every birthday. I come to remind you what you are. You think you can run? You think you can hide in a school with the bald man and play hero?"
He lunged, a feint. I flinched, slashing at empty air.
Victor laughed, stopping short. "Look at you. Pathetic. Shaking like a leaf. Do you remember what I did to the girl in the mountains? Do you remember the sound her neck made? It was a distinct snap, Jimmy. Like dry wood."
The rage surged. It wasn't a slow burn; it was an explosion. The memory of Kayla, overlaid with his mockery, shattered my composure.
"VICTOR!" I screamed.
I abandoned strategy. I abandoned caution. I charged.
I closed the distance in a second, swinging my right hand in a vicious arc meant to take his head off.
Victor didn't even block. He just ducked.
He moved with a fluid, liquid grace that I couldn't track. He ducked under my swipe, spun, and raked his claws across my ribs.
RIP.
My leather jacket shredded like paper. I felt the stinging burn of four parallel cuts opening up my side.
I roared, spinning to backhand him, but he was already gone. He was behind me. A heavy boot slammed into my spine, sending me stumbling face-first toward a tree.
I caught myself, spinning around, slashing wildly.
Clang!
My claws hit a rock he had kicked up.
"Sloppy," Victor sneered, leaning against a tree, picking his teeth with a claw. "You're fighting like a bar brawler, Jimmy. Where's the soldier? Where's the weapon?"
I charged again. And again. And again.
But every time I swung, he wasn't there. Or he parried, deflecting my heavy, metal-laden strikes with frustrating ease.
I was losing.
The realization hit me harder than his fists. I had Logan's memories. I knew how to fight. I could remember a thousand battles. But remembering a technique and executing it were two different things.
My body was heavy. The adamantium weighed me down. My timing was off by milliseconds. I was operating on muscle memory, but the neural pathways between Liam's conscious mind and Logan's reflex systems were lagging. It was like playing a high-speed video game with a bad internet connection.
Victor saw it, too. His smirk grew wider, more cruel.
"You're broken," he whispered, stepping into my guard. He caught my wrists, his strength matching mine, holding my claws away from his face. "All that shiny metal on your bones, and you're weaker than you've ever been."
He headbutted me.
CRACK.
Stars exploded in my vision. My nose shattered. I stumbled back, blood pouring down into my mouth. I tasted copper and dust.
Victor didn't let up. He followed the headbutt with a knee to the solar plexus that folded me in half, then a double-fisted hammer blow to my back that drove me into the dirt.
I gasped, eating dirt. My healing factor was working—I could feel my nose snapping back into place with a sickening crunch—but it wasn't fast enough. He was going to kill me. Or worse, he was going to torture me for days.
I need an edge, I panicked. I need something he doesn't expect.
[SYSTEM ALERT: HOST IN CRITICAL DISTRESS]
[POINTS AVAILABLE: 20]
The blue screen flickered in my peripheral vision, translucent over the dirt I was lying in.
"System," I thought, the command desperate. "Allocate points! Strength! Durability!"
[PLEASE SPECIFY AMOUNT.]
Victor grabbed me by the hair, hauling my head up. He raised his claws, aiming for my throat. "Time to bleed, Runt."
"FIVE!" I screamed internally. "FIVE TO STRENGTH! FIVE TO DURABILITY!"
[PROCESSING... ALLOCATING 5 POINTS TO STRENGTH.]
[PROCESSING... ALLOCATING 5 POINTS TO ENDURANCE/DURABILITY.]
It didn't happen slowly. It happened instantly.
A surge of heat, hotter than the rage, hotter than the blood, erupted in the core of my body. It felt like molten lead was being poured into my muscles, expanding them, hardening them. My skin felt tighter, denser. The fatigue that was dragging at my limbs evaporated, replaced by a terrifying, boundless energy.
Victor paused.
His animal instincts were sharper than mine. He smelled the change. He felt the sudden shift in the air pressure around us. The scent of my sweat changed from fear to something... potent.
He frowned, his hand tightening in my hair. "What the—"
I didn't give him time to figure it out.
I planted my feet. The ground beneath my boots cracked under the new, amplified pressure. I didn't try to use a technique. I didn't try to be a martial artist. I just used brute force.
I drove my right fist straight up, aiming for his solar plexus.
It wasn't just a punch. It was a cannonball.
BOOM.
The impact made a sound like a thunderclap. The air was displaced violently around us.
Victor's eyes bulged out of his head. He actually lifted off the ground. The breath was driven out of him so violently that spittle sprayed into the air.
I didn't stop. I grabbed the lapels of his trench coat with my left hand—my grip crushing the thick fabric and the leather beneath it—and pulled him down while driving my right fist into his jaw.
CRACK-THOOM.
The sound of his jaw breaking was loud, but the force behind it was louder.
Victor was launched. He didn't just fall back; he flew. He sailed backward through the air, crashing through a thicket of saplings, snapping them like dry twigs, before slamming into the trunk of a massive pine tree twenty feet away.
The tree shook. Pine needles rained down like confetti.
Victor slid down the trunk, leaving a smear of blood on the bark. He hit the ground in a heap, his limbs splayed at unnatural angles.
Silence returned to the forest.
I stood there, panting, staring at my fists. Steam was practically rising off my body. The rush was intoxicating. I felt like I could punch a hole through a tank.
Victor groaned. He twitched, his healing factor already trying to mend his shattered jaw. He pushed himself up on shaky arms, blinking groggily. One of his eyes was swollen shut. He looked at me, and for the first time, I saw genuine confusion in that feral gaze.
"How..." he mumbled, blood bubbling past his lips. "How did you..."
I walked over to him. My steps were heavy, measured. I wasn't running anymore.
I stopped right in front of him. He tried to snarl, tried to summon that predator's arrogance, but his body was failing him. The shock of the power spike had scrambled his nervous system.
"I'm full of surprises, Bub," I growled.
I lifted my boot—heavy, leather, and now backed by enhanced musculature—and brought it down.
CRUNCH.
I stomped on his face. Not enough to kill—killing Sabretooth was nearly impossible anyway—but enough to end the conversation. The ground cratered beneath his head. His skull fractured with a wet, grinding sound.
Victor Creed went limp. His breathing hitched, then settled into the slow, rhythmic wheeze of the unconscious.
I stood over him for a long moment, my chest heaving. The rage was still there, buzzing under my skin, demanding I finish it. Demanding I pop the claws and take his head off while he slept.
Do it, the Wolverine whispered. End it.
No, Liam replied. Not like this. And not yet. We need to be better.
I stepped back, forcing the claws to retract. Snikt. The relief was immediate.
I leaned against a nearby tree, sliding down until I was sitting on the mossy roots. I took a deep breath, checking myself.
The cuts on my side had already closed, leaving faint pink lines that were rapidly fading to white. My nose was straight again. But deeper than that, I felt... upgraded.
"System," I breathed. "Report."
The blue screen hovered before me, casting a cool light on the unconscious monster a few feet away.
[BATTLE COMPLETE: SURVIVED ENCOUNTER WITH NEMESIS (VICTOR CREED)]
[REWARD: 500 XP]
[CURRENT STATUS:]
[HOST: LOGAN]
[STR: 25 -> 30 (Low-Tier Superhuman -> Mid-Tier Superhuman)]
[END: 40 -> 45 (High-Tier Superhuman)]
[POINTS REMAINING: 10]
I looked at the numbers. A 5-point increase didn't look like much on paper, but in reality? It was the difference between bruising your knuckles on a guy's jaw and shattering it. It was exponential.
I flexed my hand. The skin felt tougher, like cured leather. The muscles coiled with potential energy.
"Don't get cocky," I muttered to myself, staring at the numbers. "He was playing with me. He underestimated me. Next time, he won't."
I looked over at Victor. He was out cold, but he wouldn't be for long. Maybe an hour. Maybe less.
I needed to move.
I pushed myself up. The temptation to spend the remaining 10 points was strong—maybe speed? Agility? But I held off. I didn't know what was waiting for me at the Mansion. I might need a boost to mental resistance if Xavier decided to poke around in my brain, or sensory enhancement if I had to track someone. Better to keep them in the bank.
I walked back to the Harley. It was lying on its side, the chrome scratched, the mirror hanging by a wire. I grabbed the handlebars and lifted it upright. It felt like lifting a bicycle. The weight was nothing now.
I straddled the seat and kicked the starter. The engine roared to life, a comforting, mechanical growl that drowned out the quiet of the woods.
I cast one last look at the tree line where my brother lay broken in the dirt.
"Sleep tight, Victor," I said, dropping the bike into gear. "I'll see you around."
I peeled out onto the asphalt, the rear tire smoking as I accelerated. I shifted gears, pushing the bike up to 80, then 100. The wind whipped at my face, cleansing the scent of blood and musk from my nose.
Westchester. The X-Mansion.
I had a brother who wanted to kill me, a past of fighting which I couldn't use yet, and a future that was a kaleidoscope of potential apocalypses. But for the first time since waking up in that motel room, I felt something other than fear.
I felt in control.