Bend You, Break You, Make You Mine

Six Years Later

Victor awakens cold and choking, strapped to a chair. A middle aged man is standing over him. “Charles, this one is awake.”

The man reaches out and starts undoing the straps holding him down. “You are very lucky to be alive,” he tells Victor.

“Jimmy,” Victor gasps, looking about wildly for his little brother. “Where is Jimmy?” He sways off the chair to his feet, only to go crashing to the ground. “Where is my brother?” he yells, rage and pain lacing his voice as he clutches the floor while waiting for it to stop spinning.

“There are two boys here named James. What is your brother’s last name?” the man asks him.

Victor snorts. “Jimmy hasn’t been a boy for a long time, mister,” he explains. “Stryker was taking him away to perform a procedure on him; he promised it would make Jimmy better. Jimmy has started to go a little crazy.” Reality has reasserted itself, and Victor is able to slowly get to his feet.

Victor catches the way the man stiffens at the mention of Stryker. “He was… is one of Stryker’s experiments?” The man nods grimly. “I think you and Charles definitely need to have a talk then.”

“And what is it I need to talk about, Erik?” Another man, who must be Charles, walks over. Victor feels a mild sense of distrust.

“Stryker and his little experiments,” Erik explains, disgust dripping off the last word. “It seems that this gentleman’s brother was one such unfortunate soul.”

Victor’s eyes narrow. “Where is my brother? And where the hell is Stryker?”

William Stryker grits his teeth in frustration after receiving word via North that the Alkali Lake facility has apparently been compromised. It will take a little bit of maneuvering, but it isn’t a big deal to separate himself from that facility.

He has much more important things to worry about. After the loss of Weapon X six years ago, Stryker lost not only funding but the confidence of his government. They nearly scrapped his project all together.

But with the well timed help of an up and coming young politician by the name of Kelly, Stryker was able to convince those in power to keep funding his project to be prepared for the coming Mutant Menace.

Still, losing Weapon X had been a big blow to Stryker’s plans. And in six years, he had been completely unable to locate the man once known as James Logan.

It was as if James had completely disappeared off the face of the earth.

Then, last week, Stryker received proof that not only was Weapon X alive and well, but a clue as to where he was located.

Stryker was never one to leave something to chance. Evidence does not just drop out of the sky into one’s lap. It either has a price, or it’s a complete fabrication.

And there, sitting in the heart of Moscow, was in fact the real Weapon X.

At least, on film he was. Stryker held in his hands multiple photographs of James with a man that he had been trying to pin down for years, Romulus.

That set Stryker’s teeth on edge to no end.

He had been hearing reports that Romulus had a male… partner who was his right hand in all matters, a man named James.

To think that Stryker had never even thought to make the connection that Romulus’s James was the same man who was Stryker’s James. All of these years spent searching Canada, and James had been in Russia the whole time.

With the help of North and Wilson, Stryker will get Weapon X back.

One way or another.

It has been two weeks since his “rescue” from Alkali Lake, and Victor is frustrated.

He went with Xavier and Lehnsherr after learning from Xavier just what kind of a man Stryker really was.

And, more importantly, after learning that this Xavier was a telepath. A telepath that promised to help him find his brother, in return for helping to protect the young students at his special school.

Standing on the deck, looking out at the rising sun on a frosty morning, Victor finds himself wondering where Jimmy is.

Or if Jimmy is even still alive.

For, as Xavier has explained, that was also a very real possibility. Jimmy may not have survived the procedure.

It wasn’t as if Stryker has left any real information for them to find Jimmy with.

Just when Victor was ready to tell Xavier where exactly he could shove his stupid school, Xavier produced results: Jimmy was in Russia.

That was where the good news ended.

Based on what Lehnsherr and Xavier had been able to salvage from Alkali Lake before the authorities caught them, Stryker had tried to completely eliminate Jimmy’s memory and turn him into something called “Weapon X”. Then Jimmy disappeared for six years.

A contact that Erik had in the government had let them know that Stryker had recently learned that Jimmy was in Russia with a man who called himself Romulus, who was apparently some kind of terrorist world domination type.

Victor planned to eviscerate him slowly.

Again, Xavier admonished him to wait.

So, for now, Victor would play along and help train these pups into warriors. Because he was going to need some serious help to get his little brother back.

And the world would run red with blood if need be.