"Is it finally here?"
Lock took a deep breath.
The past two months of calm had lulled him into a false sense of security, almost making him forget this was coming.
The screech of tires grinding over gravel cut through the air, the car screeching to a stop about twenty meters from the barn.
Dust swirled as the driver's door was shouldered open.
Yup, that classic federal agent move—like the door weighed a ton.
A polished Oxford shoe stepped out, glinting in the sunset, followed by the crisp, razor-sharp crease of suit pants.
And then, the familiar voice...
"Goddamn, this road's even worse than last time! My brand-new Ferragamos!"
"Vance," a gruff voice cut in.
A white-haired man stepped out of the passenger side, radiating authority.
Smith adjusted his tie, his voice low and commanding.
"Watch your mouth. We're 'Special Agents' and 'Senior Special Agent' now. High-ranking officials. Act like it—don't embarrass us."
"Yeah, right," Vance muttered, rolling his eyes. "High-ranking officials? And we're stuck driving this beat-up Chevy? I must've pissed off the universe to get stuck with you after the organization's overhaul."
"Oh, really?" Smith sighed, clapping a hand on Vance's shoulder. "Didn't you beg to come back after I paired you with Black for three days? Said he couldn't even brew a decent coffee."
Vance choked, then snapped, "That's because he put sugar in an Americano! Sugar! Who does that?!"
Smith shook his head, done arguing, and started toward the barn.
Grumbling, Vance followed, checking his pant legs for mud stains while muttering, "Should've requested a transfer to the Europe branch. At least their roads are paved!"
Without turning, Smith tossed back, "You'd just complain that Europeans can't make a proper burger."
Vance opened his mouth to argue but gave up, kicking a pebble instead.
Crack!
The stone smacked the car door, leaving a tiny dent.
Smith glanced back, his mouth twitching. "Repair costs come out of your paycheck."
Vance: "..."
From the barn doorway, Lock, silently eavesdropping with Star Platinum, let out a faint smirk.
Same old duo.
That put him at ease.
But... organization overhaul?
What was going on with their group?
"Mr. Lock! Guess we're fated to meet again!" Smith called out, approaching before Lock could dwell on it. "Anything unusual on the farm lately?"
Lock nodded, his Adam's apple bobbing as he lowered his voice dramatically. "You guys, I've been waiting for you!"
Smith and Vance froze, their eyes meeting behind their sunglasses.
Vance's fingers inched toward his waist, but Smith stopped him with a look.
"Mr. Lock," Smith said, flashing a textbook bureaucrat smile while lifting his briefcase. "We're just here to check on Kansas farmers. Routine survey. What exactly are you talking about?"
"Phew!" Lock let out an exaggerated sigh, glancing around before grabbing their arms and pulling them toward the barn. "Come inside!"
The barn door groaned, sunlight slicing through the wooden slats into thin golden threads.
Lock made sure the door was latched before turning to them. "Alright, I'm gonna tell you something, but don't freak out!"
Smith patted Lock's shoulder calmly. "We're professionals. We don't scare easy."
"Good!" Lock leaned on an old wooden crate stacked with hay, his voice grave. "Mutants are real!"
The barn fell so quiet you could hear a piece of straw hit the floor.
"Uh..."
"Mr. Lock, don't kid around," Vance said awkwardly.
"I saw it with my own eyes!" Lock's voice rose, his hands waving wildly. "That stormy night, there was this guy with metal claws coming out of his hands!"
"He was fighting some... thing, and it was loud as hell!"
"The next morning..." His voice trembled. "My wheat field looked like a tornado tore through it. The fences were just scrap metal!"
Vance didn't seem impressed, but Smith's breathing quickened noticeably.
"Mr. Lock..."
"You're sure it was a man with metal claws?" Smith's voice shot up.
Startled by the reaction, Lock nodded quickly. "Swear to God!"
"I got it on video!"
He grabbed his Casio QV-10 from a nearby crate—the world's first digital camera with an LCD screen, or so they said.
The three huddled together, watching the blurry barn footage where flashes of metal claws gleamed.
And then...
"Fck, fck!"
The faint, cursing voice.
That voice.
It was him!
Smith would never forget the werewolf strapped to the operating table, cussing out his mother!
"Damn it!"
Smith slammed his fist against his thigh, snatching the camera and yanking Vance's tie as he turned.
"Let's go! Now!"
"Hey, uh, my camera—"
"Sorry, Mr. Lock!" Smith shouted without looking back, his voice choppy as he ran. "Urgent business came up!"
"We need the camera!"
"It's officially requisitioned. We'll compensate you triple its value. Check your bank in a couple of days!"
"My Armani! Smith, you're wrecking my suit!"
"Shut up!"
Smith tossed Vance into the car, floored the gas, and the Chevy roared like it was on its last legs, spewing a cloud of black exhaust.
The tires spun wildly in the mud, splattering the barn's outer wall with a new layer of "art."
Lock stood in the swirling dust, watching them speed off.
He chuckled softly. He hadn't expected that big of a reaction.
Thought he'd have to argue a bit more.
"Dad," Dio's voice came from the shadows under the eaves, where he'd appeared unnoticed, leaning against the doorframe. "Your acting was so over-the-top, I almost puked."
"Look who's talking," Lock shot back, grabbing Dio and pinching his cheeks. "Last time you faked sick to skip school, you were coughing like you were hacking up a lung."
---
The Chevy bounced wildly down the dirt road.
Vance clung to the overhead handle, his suit creased comically by the seatbelt.
"Smith! Are you freaking insane?!" he roared. "Eighty miles an hour on this crap road?! The tires are gonna fly off!"
Smith ignored him, gripping the steering wheel so hard his knuckles turned white. "Shut up, Vance."
"What's the big deal with that mutant?!" Vance's eyes widened. "We didn't even get to the Reaper thing! Lock was obviously lying!"
"This isn't about the Reaper anymore!" Smith bellowed.
"It's about that mutant! Mutant!"
He slammed the wheel, making the Chevy screech on the narrow road.
Vance blinked, then scoffed. "So what? A mutant took out our experiment. Isn't that a win? We wouldn't even be here if it wasn't for that."
He shrugged. "Honestly, when we saw that energy spike and then it flatlined, I thought it was just a satellite glitch. Plus, your cousin watching the farm didn't report anything weird..."
"And with the organization's overhaul, I've been swamped. I almost forgot about this! If you hadn't dragged us back here on a whim, I wouldn't have even brought it up!"
Vance rolled his eyes. "And now you're freaking out over one mutant."
"Just one mutant?" Smith let out a chilling laugh. "Vance, he's not just any mutant!"
"He's the one with metal claws coming out of his body!"
Vance paused. "So? Mutants have all kinds of weird powers. Claws aren't new."
"Have you even read the files?!"
Smith slammed the brakes, the tires carving ugly gashes in the mud.
He ripped off his sunglasses, his bloodshot eyes glaring. "Wolverine! The most important test subject since this program started!"
"The metal in his body? Even studying half of it gave us breakthroughs! You think the military funds us for fun?!"
Smith gritted his teeth, yanking out his phone and dialing so hard he nearly broke the buttons.
The call connected, and he unleashed.
"Fck! What the hell were you doing watching that farm?!"
"Uncle, chill," came a lazy voice. "It's just a podunk farm. I watched for a few days, nothing happened, so I left."
"Left?!"
Smith's voice nearly blew the roof off. "I told you to watch it 24/7!"
"Come on, there's not even Wi-Fi out there. Three days and I was losing it—"
"Fck! You're fired!"
Smith slammed the phone down, his chest heaving.
Vance smirked, ready to jab—"Told you your relatives were useless"—but swallowed it when he saw Smith's face, dark as a storm cloud, like a lion about to pounce.
The car went silent.
After a few seconds, Vance spoke cautiously. "So... what now?"
Smith took a deep breath and dialed another number.
"Smith?" came a questioning voice.
"General Lane," Smith said, his voice tight, knuckles white on the wheel. "We might've found Logan's trail in Kansas."
A heavy, suppressed breath came through the line.
Vance swallowed hard.
He'd never seen Smith call that general directly.
Sam Lane.
General Lane.
The man who'd reshaped the entire organization in just months.
His ruthless crackdown on mutant crimes was so terrifying that Vance had considered quitting and going home more than once.
He was scared Lane might just wipe out anything tied to mutants—including their Mutant Crime Task Force.
Most agents had Lane's number but never dared call it, routing through his secretary instead.
Nobody wanted to be on his radar.
"Yes, General, here's the situation," Smith said, piecing together the story for the man on the other end, feeling the weight of the silence.
His heart was pounding.
"You're sure? It's really him?"
Lane's voice came after a long pause, chilling Vance's spine.
"Kansas!" Smith said quickly. "Thanks to tech, we've got video footage and a witness description."
"Then move! Now!" Lane roared, the car's speaker buzzing.
"Turn the entire Midwest upside down if you have to, but find that damn mutant!"
His last words dripped with bone-deep hatred.
Vance clamped a hand over his mouth, too scared to breathe.
"Understood," Smith said, his throat tight. "What about the farmer witness? Standard protocol?"
"Smith!"
A metallic crunch—maybe a crushed coffee mug?—came through with Lane's roar.
"You're stuck in the old playbook! I'm in charge now!"
The car's windows trembled, as if nature itself feared his voice.
"Killing witnesses is what incompetent cowards do!"
"I let you slide when you lost that 'weapon' because you paid the farmer ten grand and it self-dissolved. But now you're telling me it's back, and a damn mutant protected our people?!"
"The ones who need handling are that slacker Vance and your useless nephew!"
Vance felt his career implode.
The call ended with a dial tone like a death knell.
Smith swerved hard, the tires screeching at the road's edge.
"Hey!" Vance smacked into the window. "Smith—"
"Shut up."
"You're demoted to field assistant. Seventy percent pay cut."
"What?!" Vance's eyes bulged. "That lunatic says something, and you—"
"It's for your own good, Vance," Smith interrupted. "It's been over thirty years since these so-called mutants showed up."
"You don't know how brutal the organization was back then."
"When we found their inhuman traits, someone funded us to start hunting them."
"They claim they're from other worlds, but we cared more about their genes."
"Genes that could give humans superpowers!"
"The only problem?"
"We couldn't crack them."
"The organization stalled, sponsors bailed, and just when we thought it was over..."
"The wolf showed up."
"We found him, and he had something different."
"A metal—tough, unexplainable, impossible to synthesize."
"You mean..." Vance's jaw dropped. "The stuff in the weapons?"
"Exactly," Smith said grimly. "That metal was so strong we couldn't find its limits. Some researchers called it a gift from God—infinite!"
"A metal that defies physics, that regenerates endlessly!"
"Those four years studying it gave us breakthroughs—new metals, new tech."
"That's why the military took us in, made us legit."
"The first director retired happy, and we stopped hunting mutants to focus on the metal."
"Then why now?" Vance asked, confused.
Smith sneered, staring at the distant town, its outline flickering like it was on fire.
"The new military director took over, and things went south. That wolf found a way to escape with other mutants."
"You know why Sam Lane hates mutants?"
"Because..."
"He was in charge of logistics and security back then, and his wife was burned to ash in that mutant uprising."
"You think he clawed his way to the top for fun? You know why every agent can contact him directly?"
"He wants to be the first to know where that wolf is!"
"This country's mutant criminals have been wiped out almost instantly by us and the military for thirty years."
"Now, the only one left is the wolf who sparked that uprising, killed hundreds in a small town, and slipped through his fingers!"
"So the second he wrapped up the frontlines, he requested a transfer back—"
"He's going to kill that wolf himself!"
Smith's voice boomed.
Vance opened his mouth but slumped back in his seat.
"Don't lose hope, Vance," Smith said, softening. "Work with me. If we find that wolf, we're set."
"Why do you think I'm in such a rush?"
"This isn't just big—it's my last shot at a promotion before I retire. My grandson's still jobless, Vance."
"I don't want him stuck farming back home!"
"Like... like..."
Smith gritted his teeth, spilling his heart. "Like that farmer back there. Like my parents, my grandparents—living their whole lives in fields, never touching the real world!"
---
Meanwhile, Lock had no clue about Sam Lane's story.
Even if he did, he'd probably just sigh about the rough fate of his and Jonathan's future in-law, Clark's father-in-law, before turning his attention back to the door.
Because, for some reason, it was open again!