"Move!"
Wolverine didn't waste a single word. He signaled Gabriela to hurry Goku and Laura into the car, and with a violent roar of the engine, the luxury limo tore out of the smelting plant's gates.
What followed was a desperate race of speed and survival. Despite Goku being powerful beyond his wildest imagination, Logan had no desire to engage the enemy if it could be avoided.
Their group was a liability in a firefight: they had the physically frail Professor, the weakened Caliban, and Gabriela, who had no combat training. A single stray bullet could end any of them.
However, none of them noticed that as the limo cleared the factory perimeter, several small, high-altitude drones were already hovering silently above, their cameras locked onto the vehicle.
"Commander, they've fled the abandoned plant. Heading north-northwest," an operative reported from inside a black SUV five kilometers away.
Donald Pierce didn't look surprised. "Adjust the intercept vectors. Cut them off."
He had known for a long time that Caliban and Logan were holed up together. He wasn't about to let Caliban's tracking ability give them a clean getaway. Before his ground teams had even arrived, he had deployed a drone swarm to provide persistent overhead surveillance.
In this flat, desolate landscape, Logan's elongated limo was a massive target. It lacked the off-road capabilities and raw horsepower of the Reavers' modified tactical vehicles. To Pierce, this wasn't just a pursuit; it was a sport. He relished the feeling of a predator closing the gap on a cornered mouse.
"Caliban, talk to me," Logan shouted over the wind, his foot buried in the floorboards. "Did we lose them?"
Caliban's voice was taut with dread. "They're getting closer. That void... that cold presence, the X-24... he's gaining on us!"
"Impossible!" Logan gritted his teeth, his knuckles white on the steering wheel.
They had left before the ground teams arrived. Unless the Institute had psychic trackers of their own, they shouldn't have been able to pinpoint their exit route so quickly. Logan had avoided the main highways, cutting through the rugged, sparsely populated terrain of New Mexico to keep their profile low.
"Still getting closer?" Logan asked again after another few miles.
Caliban nodded, his face pale with sickness and fear.
"Look up. Check the sky," Professor X suddenly spoke, his voice calm but authoritative. Despite his failing health, the Professor's tactical mind remained sharp.
Logan realized the mistake instantly. He tried to lean out of the window while maintaining control of the speeding limo, squinting at the bright sky. But the GMO-tainted food had done its work; his vision was blurred and aged. He could barely read a newspaper without glasses, let alone spot a tactical drone flying at high altitude against the glare of the sun.
Fortunately, he had a martial artist with superhuman senses in the back seat.
"There are three little iron birds following us," Goku said, sticking his head out the window. He didn't even have to squint to see the three drones keeping pace with them from several hundred feet up.
The atmosphere in the car turned frigid. They all knew what that meant: as long as those "birds" were up there, they were driving with a permanent GPS beacon on their roof.
But knowing the problem didn't provide a solution. Handguns were useless against agile, high-altitude targets, and they had no specialized anti-air weaponry.
Gabriela was just a nurse, Logan was half-blind and preferred his claws, Caliban was physically withered, and the Professor was confined to a chair. As for Goku and Laura—well, they were children. No one expected them to be master snipers.
"Son... is there any way you can bring them down?" the Professor asked gently, looking at Goku.
Having spent a lifetime training young mutants, Xavier saw a flicker of hope in the boy's incredible reflexes and strength. He figured if Goku threw something with enough force—a lug nut, a stone, anything—he might have a chance of knocking one out of the sky.
"Knock them down? That's easy!"
Goku nodded cheerfully. But he didn't reach for a rock as the Professor expected. Instead, he reached behind his back and pulled out the simple red staff he always carried.
"Extend, Power Pole!"
Under the stunned gazes of everyone in the car, the staff in Goku's hand suddenly whistled through the air, elongating at a terrifying speed.
It shot upward like a red spear, stretching hundreds of feet in a fraction of a second until it reached the altitude of the drones.
Goku gave the staff a series of rapid, powerful swiped. *CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!*
The three surveillance drones were pulverized in mid-air, raining down as showers of sparks and twisted plastic. With Goku's strength behind it, that staff could have swatted a fighter jet out of the sky just as easily.
...
Five kilometers back, Donald Pierce stared at his snowy monitor in shock. "What just happened?"
He had seen the red blur on the screen for a millisecond before the feed cut out. He had never seen a weapon with that kind of reach and kinetic energy. What kind of material possessed that level of elasticity and strength?
Beside him, Dr. Rice's eyes widened with greed rather than fear. "Incredible... that staff must be a masterpiece of metallurgy or biological engineering. If we can reverse-engineer its properties, imagine the applications. Wolverine's claws... being able to extend from inches to feet instantly. It would make them unstoppable."
"Catch them!" Rice ordered, his voice trembling with excitement. "I want that boy and that weapon!"
"Don't worry, Doctor," Pierce sneered, regaining his composure. "We're close enough now. Even without the drones, they have nowhere to hide in this desert."
Sure enough, in less than ten minutes, the Reavers' convoy crested a ridge and spotted the dust cloud kicked up by the luxury limo.
"Let's give them a proper greeting," Pierce said, a sadistic glint in his eye. "Fire a rocket. Take out the wheels."
Pierce didn't care about the collateral damage. A rocket wouldn't kill Logan, X-23, or the boy—their durability was too high—but it would destroy their transport. As for the Professor, Caliban, and the nurse? They were expendable assets. Killing the Professor now would actually save Pierce the headache of dealing with a potential psychic seizure later.
In the back of a modified pickup truck, a hulking mercenary stood up, bracing a portable rocket launcher against his shoulder. He peered through the optic, locking onto the black limo as it bounced across the scrubland.
"Incoming! They have a launcher!" Logan roared, spotting the mercenary in the rearview mirror.
He began to swerve violently, fishtailing the long limo across the dirt to break the enemy's lock. But the erratic movement forced him to drop his speed significantly, allowing the Reavers to close the distance. At this range, even a serpentine maneuver wouldn't save them.
*FWOOSH!*
The rocket ignited, trailing a plume of white smoke as it screamed toward the back of the car.
Logan watched the mirror in despair. He knew his luck had run out. The limo was too heavy, too sluggish. He couldn't dodge this one.