The transformation of Corporal Miller into a "Trauma Variant" Feral Striker had a profound impact on Logan's small, unconventional team. O'Malley, the pragmatic engineer, treated Miller with a new level of cautious respect, mixed with a healthy dose of superstitious awe. He'd witnessed a literal resurrection, a man torn apart by shrapnel and then reborn as something… else. His loyalty to Elias (whom he knew only as the enigmatic "Mr. Blanchard" through Logan's terse commands) solidified further; any organization capable of such feats was not to be trifled with. Miller himself was grappling with his new reality. His memories were intact, but his body was alien, his senses a constant barrage, his instincts raw and predatory. The bone claws felt both foreign and frighteningly natural. His chronic pain from old war wounds was gone, replaced by a vibrant, if unsettling, vitality, and a deep, aching cold that settled in his bones when his healing factor worked overtime. The most profound change was psychological: a constant, low hum of aggression, a heightened awareness of threat, and an unshakable, life-debt loyalty to Elias Thorne, the unseen force that had snatched him back from oblivion. He instinctively deferred to Logan, recognizing the alpha in their shared, savage nature.
Logan, for his part, watched Miller with a quiet, brooding intensity. He saw a reflection, however distorted, of his own cursed existence. He took it upon himself to guide Miller through the initial, disorienting stages of his transformation – teaching him to control the claws, to filter his senses, to manage the primal urges that now warred with his ingrained military discipline. It wasn't kindness; it was the pragmatic instinct of a pack leader ensuring a new whelp didn't become a liability. But beneath it, Elias sensed through his System link, there was a flicker of something else – a reluctant empathy, a shared understanding of being made, not born, into a weapon. This unexpected mentorship subtly deepened Logan's own integration with Elias's overarching goals; Miller's survival and adaptation became a proxy for Logan's own grudging acceptance of his role. [Loyalty (Wolverine): +2% (Total: 75% – Witnessing/Facilitating Asset Preservation/Empowerment; Shared Pack Mentality with Miller)]. Conduit Integration (Wolverine): Advanced (Unlockable Sub-Routine: "Feral Empathy Link (Minor)" approaching threshold – allows limited understanding of other enhanced/primal beings).]
The immediate aftermath of the Todesritter facility's destruction required a swift exfiltration. Hydra would be swarming the Carpathians. Elias, coordinating through Anya in London, arranged for a perilous extraction. It involved a rendezvous with a group of Romanian partisans (another of Finch's obscure pre-war academic contacts, activated by Elias's resources), a long, grueling trek through snow-choked mountains, and eventually, a clandestine flight out of a remote, makeshift airstrip on a modified An-2 biplane. Miller, despite his recent trauma, healed at an astonishing rate, his Feral Striker resilience kicking in, allowing him to keep pace. He was changed, scarred, but undeniably, brutally alive.
Once back in a secure Thorne-controlled safe house in neutral Switzerland, Elias had a chance to assess Miller more closely via detailed reports from O'Malley and direct, if cautious, communication with Miller himself through Logan. The "Trauma Variant" aspects were fascinating. Miller's bone claws were thicker, more rugged than Dubois's or Macgregor's, almost like shards of jagged rock. His healing factor, while still Tier Delta overall, seemed to prioritize repairing catastrophic damage over finesse, leaving behind more prominent, silvery scar tissue that faded slowly. The most significant difference was his "Battle Fury." When triggered, it wasn't just heightened aggression; it was a state of almost preternatural focus on survival, a cold, relentless determination to endure and overcome any threat, likely forged in the crucible of his near-death experience. He was less a berserker and more an unbreakable, vengeful revenant.
Elias instructed O'Malley to begin discreetly documenting Miller's recovery, his abilities, his psychological state. This data was invaluable for refining the Feral Striker template and understanding the System's "Adaptive Regeneration Protocol." He had not just gained an operative; he had gained a living laboratory.
With Miller recuperating, Elias refocused Logan on the primary Hydra objective: Johann Schmidt, the Red Skull. The Adlerhorst intel had mentioned Zola was en route to Schmidt with critical Tesseract data before the Winter Soldier's intervention. Now that Zola was in Soviet hands, locating Schmidt became even more paramount. If Hydra was truly a multi-headed beast, Schmidt was likely its most dangerous, most visionary cranium.
Anya's network, sifting through the chatter of panicked Hydra remnants and leveraging their British intelligence contacts, began to pick up faint whispers. Schmidt hadn't perished at Adlerhorst. He hadn't been displaced with the Tesseract. Rumors suggested he had been at a different Alpine stronghold during the raid, a deeper, even more secret facility known only by the codename "Festung Niemals" (Fortress Never). Some even whispered he had anticipated a potential attack on Adlerhorst and had used it as a decoy, a catastrophic feint to mask his true operations.
The Tesseract's disappearance was a blow to Hydra, but Schmidt, if alive, was still a formidable threat, possessed of a brilliant, malevolent intellect and potentially his own Prime Conduit-level enhancements.
Elias tasked Logan with verifying these rumors, tracking down any Hydra operatives who might know Schmidt's current whereabouts or the location of Festung Niemals. This was a more subtle hunt, requiring patience, intimidation, and the careful extraction of information rather than wholesale slaughter. Miller, still recovering but fiercely determined, insisted on accompanying Logan and O'Malley. His new senses, his unwavering focus, and his sheer, unnerving presence proved surprisingly effective in... "persuading" captured Hydra agents to talk. The trio became a fearsome interrogation unit – Logan the unstoppable force, Miller the silent, menacing presence, and O'Malley the reluctant chronicler and technical expert.
Their pursuit led them across the shattered landscape of occupied Europe, from the bombed-out cities of Germany to the partisan-haunted forests of Yugoslavia. They uncovered a trail of breadcrumbs: coded messages, lists of requisitioned scientific equipment, disappearances of specialized engineers, all pointing towards a massive, clandestine construction project somewhere deep within the Austrian Alps, a region so remote and heavily fortified that even Allied bombers gave it a wide berth.
Meanwhile, Elias was not idle in North America. His Feral Striker pack – Dubois, Macgregor, and Beaulieu – under Thomas's command, were now fully operational. He couldn't risk sending them directly into the European meat grinder against Hydra or the Soviets yet; they needed more seasoning, more experience against opponents who weren't just ordinary soldiers. He found a different, equally dangerous proving ground for them: the escalating undeclared naval war in the Pacific, beyond just U-boat hunting.
Namor, from his Caribbean islet, had reported increasing Japanese naval activity that was… "unnatural." Not just fleet movements, but whispers amongst the currents of strange, deep-sea research stations, of Japanese attempts to harness geothermal vents for power, and even more bizarrely, of "honored ancestors" (ancient, powerful sea creatures) being disturbed or even "corrupted" by Japanese "Oceanic Purity" cultists with Imperial Navy backing. These cultists were reportedly seeking to awaken or control these leviathans to use as weapons.
"Your air-breather wars are poisoning the depths, Thorne," Namor's voice had crackled, filled with regal fury. "These Japanese… they defile the sacred places. They meddle with powers that will consume them. And their metal ships now carry a stench… a wrongness… that offends the very currents."
This was an opportunity Elias couldn't ignore. A potential new front against a new kind of "enhanced" threat. A chance to blood his Feral Strikers against something truly monstrous, to gather unique combat data, and perhaps, to earn Namor's deeper cooperation, even loyalty. And, if these "corrupted" sea creatures or the cultists themselves possessed unique energy signatures, perhaps even more Prime Essence Shards.
He dispatched Thomas and his three Feral Strikers aboard a heavily modified "Blackwood Shipping" trawler, ostensibly a long-range meteorological survey vessel, into the South Pacific. Their mission: locate these Japanese "Oceanic Purity" cultists, identify their targets, and if possible, neutralize their efforts to weaponize these deep-sea leviathans, with Namor providing remote, hydro-acoustic intelligence and guidance.
It was a wildly ambitious, incredibly dangerous gambit, sending his land-based Feral Strikers into an aquatic environment against unknown, potentially kaiju-sized threats. But Elias Thorne was playing for the highest stakes, on a global board where the shadows of the past – ancient sea gods, Teutonic knights, primal mutants – were colliding with the terrifying technological and biological nightmares of the future. His Feral Strikers were the scars of that collision, and he was their unseen, calculating master.