Okay, I just couldn't leave these two alone, so sue me. I blame the plot bunnies.

Disclaimer: I don't own the X-men, Wolverine or Gears of War.

Hoffman's briefings are precise, to-the-point and well-delivered in respect to their target audience: Gears. Prescott's however, aren't. Marcus wants desperately to get a move on with things, shut the man up with a broken jaw and just leave with the file the Chairman is holding. A nameless, generic folder made of pale green card and impossible to differentiate between if stored with other green folders. Marcus uses it to gauge how much of a nightmare this mission is going to be. If Prescott is giving the briefing, he knows without a doubt the mission will be terrible. If he's using a named green folder, nigh-on suicide. A named, stamped folder: just suicide. Green and nameless folder with Prescott giving the briefing and bare minutes before they leave… Marcus is wondering what you are when you agree to go on missions that you know will kill you, in that brutally certain way things like nuclear weapons have of killing you. With no chance of survival unless you happen to be of a species of cockroach immune to the effects of radiation that is. Or a small, lethal man with a tendency to grin like a wolf and kill things like it's a 9 to 5 job.

"You will meet up with a Gear already in situ in the Hollow and from there proceed to the place, from what intel we have received from the agent, that acts as their base of operations and possibly the home of their ruler." Marcus focuses completely on Prescott's words after hearing that. He hasn't heard of any Gears going into the Hollow since Operation Landown or the following missions. Logan has told him that to get in there in the first place is difficult, to remain undetected almost impossible and to stay there for any length of time a baseless hope. Marcus didn't ask how he knew, the man has been on edge, slightly what Marcus can only describe as sharp ever since he joined the COG and started going on lone black ops gigs across Sera, most of them in Locust-occupied areas too.

"When you have the information you are to return to the surface, find a relatively safe LZ and call for a pick-up. Thank-you, Gears and good luck." Prescott gives his official nod, the one Marcus has noticed he always uses to end any speech no matter how short, and leaves. Baird looks unamused.

"Well that was useful." He assumes a mincing pose and clutches a folder of air." Look at me, I got an 'agent' into the Hollow, we've no info so why don't you walk in there and go get us some. Don't you think my smile is nice? I do. Off you go then. Enjoy dying slowly and painfully." No-one smiles, that last statement was a little close to the mark. "Asshole." Baird mutters. Marcus decides that they've had enough time to think over the vague assertions and inferences they were just given and leads the way out of the briefing room and over to the plane of concrete outside the Vehicles Warehouse. Their assigned King Raven is waiting for them and nothing is left to be done before deployment.

The Raven lifts off smoothly once Delta are on-board and heads towards their insertion point. Marcus runs through possibilities, plans and contingencies in his head, keeping an eye on the squad while he does so, watching for signs of anxiety. Not that he would blame anyone for being frightened or scared when heading back to the Hollow but he has to be sure that the squad is up to the task set it, the slightest mistake on this mission and someone could die. The most obvious person to be suffering from stress over the likelihood of survival is Anya. Marcus doesn't doubt that she has grit and determination but she's fairly new to the field, not something you want to be when going on a mission worthy of both Prescott and an unmarked folder.

The chopper banks as it comes in to land in front of a cliff face, old stone that has bent and warped over the millennia towering over them and casting the treeline behind the dismounting Gears into shadow, making menaces out of the landscape. The King Raven departs. Marcus watches it go, most likely the last friendly thing he will see for weeks aside from the Gears under his command. And what a command: Dom, Baird, Dizzy and Cole still present in the squad but now complemented by Bernie herself and the newly fielded Anya Stroud, still looking impeccable in her standard-issue armour with her hacked-short hair. Marcus says nothing, not wanting to give a pep talk or discuss tactics. He just finds the slit in the cliff face, a deep fold in the cliff that forms a passageway into the upper, remote region of the Hollow. How Prescott could have found out about it is beyond Marcus but he leads Delta into the gloom regardless.

The tunnels are much like the others he has been in, strange bioluminescence lighting the spaces and rockworms scavenging around for fallen fruit. Looted sandbags, natural protrusions of rock all creating possible spots for cover and not a sound to be heard apart from the wind whistling out through the slit in the rock that they just came in through. Marcus signals for Bernie to take point, as a tracker and sniper she's the best at spotting Locust before the Locust spot them and more than capable of taking lone scouts out with a single shot from her sniper rifle. Progress is slow, caution dictating that extreme care be taken not to be ambushed, trapped or discovered too early but nevertheless, they make their way deeper into the caverns of the Hollow.

Motion stops, Bernie gradually lowers her hand and no-one even breathes heavily because on the other side of the near-bottomless cavern that their chosen tunnel has merged into the side of as a wide ledge, is another ledge and on this one is a group of Locust. Not just a scouting or normal raiding party either. Marcus counts two Boomers, over a dozen Drones and a Theron Guard, not a group sent out to do anything less than kill Gears. Bernie very slowly raises her rifle to aim at the Locust. The shadows of the tunnel wall behind the enemy warp and explode into a black blur. The Theron Guard falls backwards, a dark shape sprouting from its forehead, the Boomers each fall to their knees as their heads tumble backwards and then the blur is amongst the Drones, one howls in fear before it too dies, blood hitting the walls and beginning to pour off the edge of the outcropping in tiny runnels.

"What the fuck is that?" Bernie mutters. Marcus comes out of his crouch and she whips her head around in shock at his revealing their location. The black figure finishes with the corpses on the other side of the tunnel and as Marcus watches, the rest of Delta too, becomes lost amidst the shadows on the far side again. Marcus stays still and then turns only his head to face the wall a mere metre to his left. Bernie follows his gaze first and then the rest of the Gears do, another minute crawls by and then the shadows deepen and this close, Delta can see the figure drop from the beams of stone above them to land right beside the wall.

"You fucking kidding me?" Comes the harsh demand as the figure stands up and leaves the tar of the shadows behind.

"What do you mean?" Marcus asks in return. Logan takes his hat off with one gloved hand and pinches the bridge of his nose for a moment before responding.

"I told him when I agreed to go black ops that I wouldn't work with others. No offense but it's a little hard to stay undiscovered down here and a squad of seven Gears isn't going to help. Not that Preskie gives a shit about difficulty and mission logistics, eh? Just the results I can get him." He replaces his Stetson. Marcus says nothing else, gestures for Logan to take the lead now and falls in behind the man. Delta follow and Bernie's first-hand experience of Logan's combat skills mean that she has some idea of who he is, Anya however has none other than access to the man's file, but Dizzy mutters something to her and although he doesn't hear the exact words, Marcus can guess with some accuracy that the Gear is telling her to save the questions for when they aren't in danger of discovery.

Marcus has a flash of déjà-vu as they go, memories of Logan's bolthole in the Riftworm coming to the fore of his mind, along with a recollection of the mutant's ambush of Drones and the ease with which he took them down after emerging from the dark like a descending wraith. This bolthole though, is harder to reach, one way in and one way out: a tunnel entrance halfway up a tunnel wall. Logan stands there patiently while Cole gives Baird and Anya a leg up and then while Dom, Cole and Marcus all haul themselves up. Bernie finds it remarkably easy and the squad hover for a moment, watching Logan effortlessly climb up.

Once inside, Logan pins a heavy piece of leathery cloth across the entrance to stop any sound from carrying too far. Marcus glances at it for a minute and then looks away as he gains a hunch as to what it might be made of. Logan notices him looking.

"Nicked it off them, Marcus. Not ideal but I have to make do with what I've got." Marcus nods, tears his eyes away and joins the rest of the squad in crouching or sitting on the stone floor, awaiting further information about what they have to do and the risks facing them. Logan clamps his teeth around an unlit cigar and leans against the wall, watching them watch him.

"Prescott wants info, yeah?" He nods to himself, "been there, done that. I've mapped these tunnels, sent back intel on every variety of Locust or indigenous Hollow species I've found and told them about the Lambent. But I won't go near the Nexus. That's why you're here, he wants you to do what I won't and map the Nexus, or just map its weak points. From what I've been told to do, he wants to sink the thing into the lake beneath it and kill the Locust Queen in the act." He shakes his head. "Getting in there is doable, getting out? Not doable.

Anya pipes up first, her comms-officer experience driving her to get the most information out of people that she can.

"Why won't you go near the Nexus?" Around her, Delta squad tense up, apart from Bernie who's gaze is narrowed, searching.

"Because the Berserkers are around there and if one of them gets wind of me, just the faintest hint of my scent, they'll go mad and so will I. I get compromised like that and I've got every Berserker in the area gunning for me, not to mention every other Locust in the Hollow. Do you know how long I've been down here, picking them off constantly? A fair while. They'll make sure I die and I've a slight aversion to being dropped in Imulsion after seeing the Lambent." Anya thinks for a moment before asking another question.

"Why would the Berserkers go 'mad'" and even to Marcus the air-quotes are painfully obvious, "if they could smell you?" Logan says nothing for an instant and Marcus can tell that he's debating what to tell this girl. Anya misjudges the pauses as a weakness.

"Why would you go mad if that happened?" Logan lifts his head and pins her down with a cold stare. She stops talking.

"Because they know what I'm like on an instinctual level, the other Locust have far less of an idea but the Berserkers are so reliant on senses other than sight that they can tell what kind of being I am. And when they howl, it sends me over the edge, I lose it."

"Define 'lose it.'" Anya challenges him. Logan stalks forward and Marcus lays one hand on his pistol grip, knowing how wired he could be by the constant danger. The mutant crouches down in front of her and locks gazes, not even blinking as he talks.

"I get called a Berserker, not because of the Locust but because it can refer to a fighter who goes into battle with no armour but a greatsword or something and deals massive amounts of damage while sustaining heavy injuries. I can kill a Locust Berserker with my bare hands, because I'm that kind of insane and every time they know I'm around, every time they howl at me, it's a challenge that I can't ignore." He returns to the wall and Anya sits there, visibly shaken.

"What are the Lambent?" Marcus asks, feeling a drop of pity for her, Logan could intimidate anyone when he's like this and she didn't know to stop. He makes a note to take her aside and tell her about Logan, after asking the man's permission.

"The pen-pushers called them that. It's the Imulsion, turns them into something else, mutates them. They glow, is the thing, and when you kill them they explode, means you have to keep your distance if you don't want to lose your eyebrows. The Locust are fighting a civil war with them, the Lambent are attacking from below and forcing them up which is why, I guess, they've started trying to occupy the surface. There's no way they can win this one though, regardless. You kill all the Locust and all you're going to end up fighting are the Lambent. Funny that, what you use for fuel is actually a microorganism that has caused the destruction of most of your species." He smiles and Marcus is struck with the imagery and poetry Logan often resembles when in action, metaphors of knives and killers, similes involving nations broken by their own power, all suddenly embodied by one man's bitterly ironic expression.

"Our species?" Bernie finally says.

"Yeah, I'm an alien." Logan informs her, deadpan.

"Don't bother joking around, why di-" She goes to demand a real answer much Like Marcus once did.

"Bernie, he really is an alien." The sergeant confirms. Bernie looks at him both sceptically and incredulously.

"You're kidding me?" She asks, half meek and half awed.

"No, I got dropped on this planet by an inter-dimensional teleporter during an anti-mutant riot back home. Same dominant species over there, humans, only we've got no Locust but then again, you've got no mutants." Logan supplies.

"No mutants?"

"The so-called next-step in human evolution. Human beings with extra genes that give them abilities like teleportation, telekinesis, flight and stuff. I'm a mutant, comes in handy in warzones but it's what makes me so affected by the Berserkers. I killed the one in Tollen with my bare hands. So yeah, technically I'm an alien and technically you're a separate species from me. Kooky, ain't it?" He throws her a grin around his cigar and winks.

"Is that true Marcus?" Anya asks. Bernie looks at her.

"If it wasn't, he would've told Logan to shut up." She nearly snaps, shock fraying her nerves.

"He can prove it!" Baird interjects, surprisingly eager. Marcus and Logan both glare at him, knowing exactly what he has in mind, nevertheless, obligingly, Logan loosens the straps on the bracer on his right arm and slips it off along with the glove underneath it. Marcus watches his face and even through the shadows cast by the brim of his Stetson, sees the faint grimace at the pain the mutant is about to subject himself to. He pops the claws on his left hand and slides the middle one through the flesh of his right forearm, fitting it between the bones and waiting until the blood is streaming off the tip of the blade in rivulets of red before retracting the claws and digging a cloth out of a pocket with which to wipe the blood off his arm.

There isn't a mark left on his skin. Bernie pales, Anya stands up hurriedly and Logan points behind her to a niche in the den walls.

"I'd go throw up over there." She goes and the sound of retching echoes through the room, Baird looks as ill as he did last time Logan stabbed his own arm. "You gonna go throw up with her, Blondie?" Logan snarls at him. Marcus doesn't feel sorry for him, a little annoyed that the Gear suggested Logan maim himself, however temporarily, but not sorry.

"We done with this little interrogation party?" Logan demands, donning his glove and bracer again. "Because I've just told you all I know about your mission and I ain't got anything else to say." Marcus declares the case closed and immediately the shorter man slips out under the cloth covering the entrance.

"Has he been doing black ops for Prescott since he joined up?" Dom asks ponderously.

"Yeah, he has." Marcus informs him.

"Why?" Comes the inevitable question.

"Because Prescott tells him to."

"But Logan's more than capable of refusing and getting away with it." Dom's concern for his squad mate is evident.

"I think that he considers it best if he goes on the missions and survives because of his abilities rather than us or other Gears going and getting hurt or dying."

"It's getting to him though, it's wearing him down, Marcus." Dom is almost pleading now and Marcus wishes he could give in. "You can tell Marcus, he's been on edge constantly since he started going on these missions, he's under too much pressure." And although Marcus bristles at the implication that Logan is weak in any way, he can see Dom's point, see it a little too clearly. He sighs.

"He's fine." Bernie speaks up again. Dom stares at her shocked and goes to respond. "He seems on edge and too wound up but he's fine. Black ops guys who are in the field make good espionage agents and then often tend to act tense all the time when they're off duty. It's because after so long on the job they get so that they notice everything and the amount of information they pick up in busy places drives them to distraction. I mean, eventually they get even better and that's not a problem and they can deal with pretty much anything just fine but they always keep up the act of being a normal person who struggles under pressure because otherwise people like Prescott take the piss with their missions and normal soldiers get scared of them." She pauses and shakes her head. "I knew a guy like him once, was exactly the same, frowned at all the right moments and snapped at the right people and then one day I got sent on a mission with him and he was like a man walking in the park, totally stress-free. He told me about it all. I remember asking him why he was still so tense when he was off duty if he didn't have a problem with the information overload and he looked at me like I'd gone mad, didn't even realise that he was acting stressed to put people at ease." She shrugs and jerks her head towards the cloth-covered entrance. "He's irritated, I'll bet, that novices like us are here, but when it comes down to it, he's fine."