Harlem, many years ago:
Logan has come here to do a friend a favor. An old war buddy asked him to find his son. Kid had run off. Most people thought drugs, but he knew different. Things have been going on with the kid lately. “Logan’s kind of things” is how he put it. He thinks his son might be like Logan, different, and that he might need help.
Logan sniffs and finds a sickly-looking African-American teenager sitting on a bank. He addresses him as Anthony and tells him he is a friend of his dad. He can help…
The boy turns towards him, mouth and eyes aglow with energy. He can’t help him! The boy explodes and Logan is thrown back.
Logan is shaken awake soon by a man who offers to call emergency. Don’t bother, is the reply, just roughened up. The area, in the meantime, has been closed off. The man figures it was a gas main. They see a covered body being loaded into a car. He was lucky, the stranger tells Logan. Yeah, lucky, he echoes hollowly.
A little later at the Central Park zoo, Logan meets one Victor Creed and tells him what happened. The men who took the boy were feds, he decides. Zipped him up in a body bag, then lit out. Fast as they got there, they were already looking for him. Speed they worked at, they’ve done it before.
So? is Creed’s monosyllabic reply. The government is hunting for people like them, Logan spells out. It’s illegal to be a bastard now? Creed asks. Logan insists more and more of them have been showing up the last few years. Mostly kids. Odds are they’ll end up like Anthony, or worse, lab rats.
It’s a hard world, Creed agrees and snarls at a tiger. Again: so? Logan figures the kids needs someone on their side. Them.
Creed grabs his jacket and swears: He came here ‘cause he thought Logan had a job! He reminds him they are hired killers, not social workers. Why would he waste a second on his touchy-feely crap?
One: he’ll pay him, Logan promises. Two: no one else is doing it. And three: what if there’d been someone who gave a damn when Victor was a kid? Unwillingly, Creed recalls how as a child he was chained alone in the basement. He’ll pay him how much? he asks.
Night at Quantico, Virgina:
The two men break into a building, following the scent of Anthony. Inside, they find his body lying lifeless under strange machinery which Logan quickly destroys.
They need to know who they are after to get them first, he decides. Creed opens a locked door. Inside they find files on people they are watching.
Creed points out there is something wrong. Even this late there should be a night watchman here. Suddenly, they are surprised by armored guards who fire at them and recognize them. Brass been looking for them, Creed notes. Awful considerate of them to save them the legwork. They may heal fast, but they still feel pain and enough pain puts down any animal.
They know nothing about him! Logan snarls and attacks one of the men, despite the pain. He cuts off his arms. Thanks to the distraction, Creed manages to take out the other guard. With the files, the two of them run. Let’s get the hell out! Logan decides, nothing back there but death! They are not present for Anthony to awaken…
Creed wonders how the hell those guys knew about them. Logan doesn’t care. They can take care of themselves. These kids can’t! They hide in a treetop.
Beginning to read the files, Logan swears. He’s just figured out why they are understaffed. There is an eighteen year old kid named Holly Bright in D.C. A runaway. They’re moving on her tonight. That’s about thirty-five miles from here. They attack two motor bikers and steal their rides.
In Washington, they witness how an elderly man hands a hot young woman all his money, pleading he needs it. Sullenly, she tells him to keep the money and follow her into a back alley.
Creed wonders that a girl this fine can’t do better than turning tricks in an alley. What they see, though, surprises them. The man sees an illusion of his young daughter who died in a fire and for whose death he blamed himself. The little girl tells him she forgives him.
Holly suddenly hears a noise and sharply asks who is there. What the hell do they want? Logan assures her they want to help. Holly orders them to come back later. She’ll make his dream come true. She guesses it has to do with being taller than a garden gnome.
They begin to argue when the soldiers catch up to them, authorizing lethal force. Creed and Logan immediately attack. Creed order Holly to run for her life. She decides she’s run enough. They should run for a change. She creates an illusion of a horrifying huge monster attacking the soldiers who flee.
So do Creed and Logan, with Logan grabbing Holly and putting her on his bike. Did she make that thing? he asks and observes she is lighter than he thought. Creed admits he could smell that thing. Holly explains she gets in people’s heads and makes it seem real.
What does she really look like? Logan asks. She asks to be called Holo. Changing to a purplehaired form, she claims that’s her real look. He’s less likely to wrap them around a tree, allowing for her real weight, he points out. Fine, she replies sullenly and turns to a smaller, flat-chested girl. Disappointed? She asks Creed: Not his to say, he snorts. He goes for women, not jailbait. Logan admits she’s good. Can she make people see fake passports, ‘cause the next name on the list isn’t in driving distance.
Oxford University in Britain, where Charles Xavier is talking with his fiancée, Moira Kinross. They discuss his stepbrother Cain Marko, who joined the army. Maybe it will make him grow up, Moira suggests and points out he is Charles’ brother. Stepbrother, Charles insists and she doesn’t want him at the wedding.
Suddenly, he senses something and makes an excuse to leave. He faces the three mutants and asks why they are following him. Impressed, Logan admits he’s tailed combat veterans who never caught wind of him. How did he-?
Charles asks about the boy he is carrying. He’s dead, Logan refers to Anthony. They are coming for them. They are grunts but Xavier is some kind of genius - and he has more than smarts. They need someone like--
Charles interrupts, realizing the boy is an illusion. He was real, Logan replies. Now he’s gone. Xavier’s people need him. They have nothing to do with each other, Charles decides. He’s been flagged, Logan tells him. Graduating Harvard at sixteen, three PhD’s by eighteen…
Xavier admits he is smart. A lot of people are. Not a lot of people read minds, Logan retorts. Angrily, Charles snaps he doesn’t need to read mind to know he and that creature behind him are nothing like Charles! He is engaged. He has a future. He is going to get married, have children and live a happy, boring professor’s life! He does that, he’ll live it hearing the screams of dying kids in his head, Logan claims.
Enough! Xavier wants to hear no more. Logan goes on thinking that on the day Xavier does the last thing he will hear the voices of those he could have helped and didn’t. On the day he dies, it will be as a human being! Xavier screams.
Logan points out that he didn’t say that out loud. Xavier needs to get a lot better at hiding in plain sight. The three leave.
Creed mocks Logan had “little lord Fauntleroy” eating out of his hand. Hell with him! Logan replies. Typical rich kid, nothing but a coward and a quitter.
Charles calls Moira.
Logan tells the others he has a line on a better prospect. Next stop: Argentina. He’s a man, not a boy. Been through hell and all. And he’s been blooded. Name’s Erik Lehnsherr.
Said Erik Lehnsherr is spending his time hunting and killing former Nazi officers in Argentina with his magnetic powers…
