Chapter 410: Latveria
Batman gave nothing away on the surface. Internally, the threads were already weaving themselves together.
"Who is this man with the shield? What does any of this have to do with Aunt May's address?"
Logan pulled his jacket tighter against the November cold. The leather was torn in several places from the fight -- clean cuts, precise and deep, the Gargoyle suit's forearm blades having done their work even against someone who could survive them.
"I wasn't looking for your aunt. I was looking for you. The people your parents spent their careers fighting -- they're moving again. They're coming for you. Your father knew they would eventually, and he made me promise to intercept them when they did."
"HYDRA?" Batman said.
He was wearing the Gargoyle suit. A man in a Vibranium combat armor who knew HYDRA by name without needing to ask was not going to raise Logan's suspicion -- it would have been more suspicious if he hadn't known.
"HYDRA," Logan confirmed. "I don't know the specific operation that killed them. I know it was connected to a country. Latveria."
That was the second time in less than a week.
Dr. Banner had surfaced the name through Reed Richards's old academic connection -- Victor von Doom, Latverian national, polymath, possibly the only person with the scholarship to read the runic script on Skurge's axe. Now Logan was connecting it to Richard and Mary Parker's final CIA assignment.
Batman filed it and kept his face neutral.
"I made a promise to Richard and I didn't keep it," Logan said, with the particular flatness of someone who has long since passed the point of self-reproach and arrived at something quieter and harder. "I had a period where I agreed to participate in an experimental procedure. The procedure replaced my entire skeleton with the alloy in these claws. It also took most of my memory. I didn't know who I was for years, let alone who I'd promised to protect."
He extended one hand slightly, the claws sliding out a few centimeters and back in. The skin around the knuckle slits healed closed immediately.
"But eventually I remembered enough. And then the man with the shield found me and gave me the last piece."
"Your skeleton is Adamantium," Batman said.
Logan's amber eyes sharpened instantly -- the same automatic wariness Batman had clocked earlier, the hair-trigger alertness of something wild that had learned the hard way that being known was dangerous.
"Yes. That's part of where the name Wolverine comes from." A pause. "How do you know that word?"
"A businessman in New York -- Wilson Fisk. The Darkwind Group in Japan performed the same procedure on him. His full skeletal structure was replaced with the same alloy." Batman kept the explanation clean and factual. "The Darkwind Group's operations have been dismantled, but the documentation I recovered identified the source of the technology."
"SHIELD or HYDRA," Logan said.
"One or the other. The pipeline ran through a SHIELD agent who was operating on HYDRA's behalf."
Logan absorbed this without visible surprise. He seemed to already believe that the line between those two organizations had never been as clean as the public version suggested.
"I'd like to find who did this to me," he said. Not a request. A statement of what existed in him.
"The Darkwind Group is gone. If the answer exists, it would be in whatever remains of HYDRA's internal records." Batman paused. "That investigation is ongoing."
Logan nodded once and let it sit. He was not the kind of person who pursued a conversation past the point where it had given him something to work with.
"The man with the shield," Batman said. "Tell me who he is."
"If I answer that, you walk into a conflict that's already in motion." Logan looked at him steadily. "Make sure you understand what you're choosing."
Batman returned the look without flinching.
"I've been hearing about this man from multiple directions for weeks. Silver Sable. Daredevil. Luke Cage. Whatever is in motion is already connected to people I know and operations I'm running. There's no version of this where I stay out of it."
Logan was quiet for a moment.
"Steve Rogers," he said. "Most people know the other name. Captain America."
Batman had been running the hypothesis for weeks. Confirmation still landed with a specific weight.
"What happened?"
"Two years ago, there was an operation. Several people participated. He doesn't know who all of them were -- none of them know. Every person who was there came out of it with no memory of what occurred. Not just foggy recall. Completely gone. Rogers doesn't remember running the operation. I don't remember being part of it." Logan's expression didn't change. "He's certain it happened because there are gaps he can't account for and fragments he can't piece together. He's been running down everyone he thinks might have been involved."
"And you're one of them."
"I am."
Batman thought of Luke Cage going rigid mid-sentence when the July-to-October 2004 period came up. The sharp head pain. The way the answer had simply stopped arriving.
"You said it earlier -- you knew Latveria was connected because Rogers told you."
"That word is the only piece he has," Logan said. "It meant nothing to me until I heard it. Then it connected to Richard and Mary, and I remembered you."
Batman stood.
"Come with me."
Logan got to his feet without hesitation and fell into step.
"Where are we going?"
"There are two other people I believe were part of that operation." Batman was already moving, choosing the fastest ground route toward Hell's Kitchen. "Luke Cage. Jessica Jones."
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