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Chapter One: The Desert at Dusk
Santa Fe, New Mexico.
A city carved out of sand and survival. Four hundred years old, yet it wore its age in scars rather than glory. Once, they called it a palace of governors. Now, it was a haven for the desperate. Border runners slipped through under moonlight, cartel men melted into the alleys, and fugitives drank their lives away in the shadows of neon motels.
The desert night crept in slowly, smothering the horizon in violet and red, until the stars began to prick holes into the black above. Out on the edge of the city, far from the sirens and the gunfire, a lone gas station flickered in the dark. Its steel shutter hung half-closed, a crooked smile of light spilling onto the sand. Inside, two men moved quietly between the aisles.
"Ash," the shopkeeper barked from the back room. He was a thickset man with yellowed teeth and skin tanned by decades of desert sun. Sweat ran down his neck as he hefted a box into storage. "Shut it down already. You know how it gets this time of night. Hungry rats crawling out of the dark, and they'll do anything for a bite."
"Yeah," Ash murmured, though he didn't reach for the shutter chain. His hands lingered on the counter, eyes restless. He was young — too young for the weariness in his gaze — and his skin was marked by the faint pallor of someone who never belonged here.
The sound of an engine broke the silence.
A black Chrysler rolled into the lot, its headlights slicing through the dust. The steel shutter rattled as the door was shoved open from outside.
The man who entered seemed less alive than dragged in by gravity itself. His gait was heavy, his eyes clouded, his beard ragged. He reeked of exhaustion and whiskey before the bottle was even in his hand.
He stepped up to the counter and rasped, "Whiskey. The strong stuff."
The shopkeeper's head popped out from the back, irritation etched deep into his face. "We're closed, pal. Come back tomorrow."
The stranger's reply was a growl. "You're lucky you left it unlocked. Otherwise I'd have ripped the damn door off."
Ash's eyes narrowed, recognition flashing behind them. The man laid a crumpled twenty on the counter.
Logan Howlett. Wolverine.
The living ghost of the X-Men.
Ash forced a smile, masking the storm inside him. "Rough night?" he asked, almost too casually.
Logan's gaze snapped toward him, sharp and instinctive. That look — the look of a predator sniffing out danger — made Ash's skin prickle. Every instinct told Logan the boy knew him. Had known him from the moment they first crossed paths two weeks ago.
But then the suspicion faded. Logan exhaled, defeated by the weight of too many years. He shook his head, took the bottle Ash slid across the counter, and left without another word.
The shopkeeper waited until Logan disappeared into the night before spitting on the floor. "Pathetic old drunk. Don't get any ideas, kid — you follow in his steps, you'll end up dead in a ditch. Guy can't even keep a driver's license, but he dreams about yachts. Yachts!" He snorted. "He's nothing."
Ash said nothing. His eyes stayed fixed on the Chrysler parked in the sand, where Logan sat with the bottle, shoulders hunched, staring into nothing.
Nothing.
But Ash knew better. He knew exactly who Logan Howlett was.
Because Ash wasn't from this world.
Eighteen years ago, he had opened his eyes in this reality, a reality that wasn't supposed to exist. He'd been reborn into a dying era — one of the last mutants to ever be born, just before the gene burned itself out of the species entirely. The world around him was unraveling.
The X-Men were gone. The Xavier School was dust. Mutants had been hunted, scattered, erased. What was left of their kind hid in the cracks, or vanished into graves unmarked.
But Ash… Ash had something different.
A mutation not just of the body, but of fate. He had discovered it by accident: when he watched someone fight, when he truly saw them, he could take something of them. A fragment of skill, of strength — sometimes even more.
And now, staring at Logan's hunched frame through the glass, Ash's heart pounded.
If he could take even a fraction of that power… the healing factor, the unbreakable defiance that had carried Wolverine through centuries… he wouldn't just survive. He would live.
Ash's fingers curled into fists.
That was when the noise shattered the night.
The sound of voices outside. Laughter, harsh and cruel. Then the metallic scrape of tools against steel.
Ash moved to the window, pulling the blinds just enough to peer out.
A gang of men surrounded Logan's Chrysler, crouched low, working at the tires with crowbars. Their shadows stretched long against the desert floor. Ash recognized the type instantly — border thieves, scavengers who preyed on the weak in the dead of night.
Only tonight, they had chosen the wrong prey.
Ash's lips parted in something between a smile and a tremor. He knew this moment. He had seen it, somewhere — in the stories of this universe, in the film reels of another.
This was it. The spark. The fight.
And if Ash was close enough, watching carefully enough… his power would awaken.
The beast inside Logan Howlett would have no choice but to rise.
And when it did, Ash would be waiting.
Waiting for his chance to steal the one thing that could save him.
The gift of survival.
The gift of the Wolverine.
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