You know that feeling when you're at a party and you realize you're the only one who didn't get the memo about the dress code? Like you showed up in a Borat man-kini and everyone else is in black tie?
That's my life. Only instead of a man-kini, I'm wearing a costume made of sweat and scar tissue, and instead of a party, I'm in a high-tech bunker facing a woman who looks like she stepped out of my happiest, least-cancerous fever dreams.
Valeria—let's call her Val, because my brain is currently too fried to handle more than one syllable—is staring at me with a look that fluctuates between "I want to kiss you" and "I want to find out what your intestines look like when they're used as holiday tinsel."
She's got the dark hair, the sharp, intelligent eyes, and that specific curve of the jawline that used to make my heart do backflips back when it wasn't a lumpy piece of gristle. She looks exactly like the [Reference Image] I keep tucked in the "Do Not Open Unless You Want to Cry" folder of my mind.
"Wade," she says, her voice steady even as the bunker vibrates from an overhead explosion. "The tracer. It's in your femoral artery. Smythe's nanites are broadcasting a localized 'ping' every three seconds. You brought the wolves to the door."
"In my defense," I say, raising my hands, "I thought it was just a regular, run-of-the-mill betrayal. I didn't know I was a walking GPS for the 'Giant Robot Association of America.'"
[He's not wrong. Technically, we're the victim here.]
[Victims don't get paid two million dollars, Yellow. Well, unless they have a really good personal injury lawyer. Call 1-800-LAW-HOUND!]
(Shut up! We have a kid? Or a variant kid? Is Ellie mine? Does she have my sparkling personality and penchant for reckless endangerment?)
I look at Ellie. She's staring at Val, then at me, then back at Val. "Mom? Is he... is this him?"
Val doesn't look away from the door. "He's a version of him, Ellie. Not the one we knew. This one is... more colorful."
"And smellier!" I add helpfully. "Don't forget the 'freshly bleached gym bag' scent. That's my signature fragrance. I call it 'Regret by Wade Wilson.'"
BOOM.
The bunker door—six inches of reinforced titanium—bulges inward. A red hot line begins to trace its way around the hinges. They're cutting through.
"No time," Val barks. She tosses me a medical scanner—a sleek, silver device that looks like a futuristic vibrator. "Dig it out. Now. Or I'll do it with the shotgun."
"Fine, fine! Honestly, the service in this Airbnb is terrible," I mutter.
I drop my tactical pants. (Hey, Reader, don't get excited. It's not that kind of story. Though, if you're into 'scarred-thigh-meat-horror,' you're in for a treat.)
I look at the scanner. A small red dot is blinking deep inside my right thigh, nestled right against the bone. The nanites are burrowing. They're smart. They know that if they stay close to the bone marrow, my healing factor will treat them like part of the furniture.
I grab a combat knife—the one with the serrated edge because I'm a masochist—and I bite down on a spare magazine of 9mm rounds.
[This is going to be spicy.]
[I hope we find a nickel in there! Or a prize! Like in a cereal box!]
(Parentheses check: If you're squeamish, skip the next two paragraphs. If you're a fan of "The Bear" but wish there was more self-mutilation, stay tuned.)
I plunge the blade into my thigh.
The pain is immediate and blinding. It's a white-hot lightning strike that travels straight to my crotch and then up my spine. My healing factor instantly tries to push the knife out, so I have to twist it to keep the wound open. The sound is like someone stirring a bucket of wet gravel.
Squish. Grrrr-ick.
I can feel the cold steel scraping against my femur. My vision is swimming in a sea of red dots. I dig the tip of the knife into the muscle, searching for the metallic 'click' of the tracer. There. It's a small, obsidian-colored bead. It's vibrating, trying to swim deeper into my flesh like a parasitic tick.
I hook it with the serrated edge and pull.
A fountain of dark, oxygenated blood sprays my face. I spit out the magazine, a guttural scream tearing from my throat. The tracer pops out and clatters onto the white floor, still pulsing with a malicious red light.
I don't even wait for the hole in my leg to close—which it's doing with a disgusting slurp-knit sound. I smash the tracer with the butt of my gun.
"Tracer neutralized," I wheeze, leaning against a server rack. "Can we... can we go to the 'Happy Place' now? I'd like a fluffy cloud and a ginger ale."
"Not yet," Val says. She's already at the door, her shotgun leveled. "Ellie, get behind the console. If the field drops, you pulse. You hear me? Don't wait for permission. You blow everything in front of you into atoms."
Ellie nods, her face pale but determined. She's a brave kid. Too brave. That's how you know she's related to me. Normal people run away from the 'Glowing Death Robots.' Wilsons just ask what color they want their funeral to be.
The door finally gives way.
It doesn't fall. It disintegrates.
Swarming through the opening aren't the giant purple Sentinels of the 90s. These are 'Mark-X Spider-Slayers,' customized by Smythe. They're the size of large dogs, sleek, black, and multi-limbed. Their eyes are glowing red sensors, and their 'mouths' are high-frequency sonic cannons.
"Hostile identified: Wade Wilson," the lead Slayer drones. "Priority One: Capture the Catalyst. Priority Two: Terminate the Nuisance."
"I'm a 'Nuisance' now?" I shout, drawing both Katanas. "I've been a 'Threat to National Security,' a 'Public Health Hazard,' and once, briefly, a 'Reason to Re-evaluate the First Amendment.' But 'Nuisance'? That's just insulting!"
The first Slayer leaps.
I meet it mid-air. My blades sparks against its carbon-fiber carapace. These things are fast—faster than anything Stark ever built. It swipes at my chest with a razor-sharp limb, tearing a gash through my suit and skin.
I don't care. I love the pain. It's the only thing that tells me the dampener gas is gone.
I twist, slamming my weight into the robot and pinning it to the floor. I drive my left sword through its 'eye,' the blade shrieking as it pierces the internal processors. The Slayer twitches, sparks flying, and then goes dark.
"One down! Ninety-nine to go!"
Val is a goddamn symphony of destruction. She's not just shooting; she's dancing. She fires the shotgun, the recoil barely moving her shoulder, and then uses the barrel to parry a Slayer's strike before pulling a sidearm and finishing it off with a headshot.
She moves like a woman who has spent the last decade fighting a war that never ended. There's a cold, mechanical efficiency to her that makes me wonder what happened to the woman in the photo.
"Wade! Left!" she screams.
I duck. A sonic pulse whistles over my head, shattering the server rack behind me. The feedback makes my teeth ache and my ears bleed.
[My ears! I can't hear my own beautiful voice!]
[I can! You sound like a dying seagull!]
(Focus, boys!)
I grab a grenade from my belt—the 'Dorothy' model—and jam it into the 'mouth' of a Slayer that's trying to climb over my back.
"There's no place like home, bitch!"
I kick the robot toward the doorway.
BOOM.
The explosion takes out three more Slayers and collapses part of the ceiling, momentarily blocking the breach.
I huff, my lungs burning. My suit is more 'red' than it was five minutes ago, and not because of the dye. I look at Val. She's reloading, her movements crisp and practiced.
"Val," I say, stepping toward her. "The girl. Ellie. Is she...?"
She looks at me, her eyes softening for a fraction of a second. "She's the reason I stayed alive, Wade. She's the reason Nathan spent twenty years in a hell-scape trying to fix the timeline. She's the end of the war."
"That's a lot of pressure for a kid who should be worrying about her TikTok followers," I mutter.
"She's a Catalyst, Wade," Val says, stepping closer. "She doesn't just produce energy. She amplifies the fundamental forces of the universe. In the wrong hands, she's a reset button for reality. In Smythe's hands... she's the end of everything."
"And in my hands?" I ask.
Val reaches out, her gloved hand touching the side of my mask. I can feel the warmth of her fingers through the fabric. For a second, the chaos of the bunker fades away. The voices go quiet. The Fourth Wall stops leaning on me.
"In your hands," she whispers, "she's a daughter."
CRACK.
The floor beneath us buckles.
A massive, metallic claw—five times the size of the Slayers—tears through the concrete. It grabs my ankle and yanks me downward.
"WADE!" Val screams.
I'm pulled into the sub-floor, falling into a dark maintenance tunnel. I hit the ground hard, my shoulder dislocating with a sickening pop.
I look up. Standing over me is something much worse than a Spider-Slayer.
It's a humanoid shape, but it's made of shifting, liquid metal. It has no face, just a smooth, mirrored surface. But as I watch, the metal ripples, forming features.
It takes the shape of Alistair Smythe.
"Mr. Wilson," the liquid-Smythe says, his voice echoing in the tunnel. "You really are a difficult man to kill. But then again, I didn't come here to kill you. I came to thank you."
"You... ow... have a funny way of... ungh... saying thanks," I say, popping my shoulder back into place. The sound makes me want to vomit, but I've had worse.
I stand up, drawing my pistols. "What's the 'thank you' for? The blood on your desk? I'm happy to provide more."
"No," Liquid-Smythe says. "For bringing me the girl. And for showing me how your cells react to the dampener. You see, Wade, you're not just a mercenary. You're a roadmap. Your DNA provided the final sequence I needed to stabilize the Catalyst's output."
He raises a hand. The liquid metal transforms into a long, wicked-looking blade.
"I don't need you anymore. But I do need your marrow. One last sample."
(Okay, Reader. We're in a bit of a pickle. I'm in a tunnel with a T-1000 knock-off, my 'family' is upstairs being swarmed by robot spiders, and I'm pretty sure I left the stove on in 2024.)
[We can take him! He's just a shiny puddle with an ego!]
[Let's see if he melts! I want to see if he tastes like mercury!]
"Hey, Al!" I yell, aiming my guns at his 'face.' "You ever hear the one about the mercenary and the liquid metal douchebag?"
"No," Smythe says, his blade-arm glowing with a faint blue light.
"The mercenary wins. Every. Single. Time."
I pull the triggers.
The bullets pass right through him. No impact. No blood. Just ripples in the metal that close up instantly.
"Oh, come on!" I groan. "Physics! Do your job!"
Smythe lunges. He's faster than the Slayers. He's a blur of chrome. The blade-arm slices through my side, carving a deep furrow through my ribs. I can feel the liquid metal entering the wound—it's cold, like ice water in my veins.
I stumble back, my vision blurring.
Above me, I hear Ellie scream. A massive blue shockwave rattles the entire bunker. Dust and debris rain down.
"THE GIRL!" Smythe hisses, his form flickering. "She's peaking! If she reaches critical mass without the stabilizer, she'll level the city!"
"Good!" I wheeze, grabbing a canister of liquid nitrogen from a wall-rack. "I always thought New York needed more green space!"
I don't aim for Smythe. I aim for the floor beneath his feet.
I smash the canister.
A cloud of super-cooled gas erupts. The liquid metal of Smythe's form instantly starts to freeze, the chrome turning dull and brittle. He shrieks—a sound like metal grinding on metal.
"You... fool!" he stutters, his movements slowing to a crawl. "You'll freeze us both!"
"Better a Popsicle than a puppet!" I shout.
I grab him. Yes, I grab the freezing, liquid-metal monster. My hands instantly stick to his torso, the skin tearing away as the extreme cold bonds us together. It's the kind of pain that makes you want to crawl out of your own ears.
I use every ounce of strength I have left. I lift him up and hurl both of us toward the overhead breach where the blue light is pulsing.
"ELLIE! DO THE THING!" I scream.
The blue light becomes blinding. It's like standing in the center of a dying star.
I feel my atoms being pulled apart. I feel Smythe's frozen form shattering into a thousand pieces. I feel the weight of the universe pressing down on my chest.
And then, silence.
I wake up face-down in the dirt.
My mouth is full of sand and what I hope is just sand. I groan, trying to move, but my entire body feels like it was put through a woodchipper and then glued back together with Elmer's.
I roll over.
The bunker is gone. In its place is a smoking crater in the middle of a forest. The trees are twisted, their leaves turned to glass.
I look to my left.
Val is sitting on a fallen log, her shotgun across her knees. She's covered in soot, but she's alive.
To my right, Ellie is curled up in a ball, sleeping. The blue glow is gone from her eyes. She looks like a normal kid again. A normal kid who just accidentally nuked a high-tech facility.
"We're in the Savage Land," Val says, her voice raspy. "Nathan's backup-backup-backup plan. The teleport was messy. Ellie's power acted as the fuel."
"The Savage Land?" I sit up, my head spinning. "Great. Dinosaurs. I've always wanted to see if a T-Rex tastes like chicken."
[Check the suit, Wade. Check the pocket.]
I reach into the tattered remains of my utility belt. My fingers brush against something cold. Something metallic.
I pull it out.
It's a small, jagged shard of the liquid-metal Smythe. It's still vibrating. And it's slowly turning from silver to red.
"He's not dead," I whisper. "He's... he's inside the shard. He's hitching a ride."
(Hey, Reader. You know how in horror movies, there's always that one guy who hides the fact that he's been bitten by a zombie? Yeah. That's me. I'm that guy.)
[We should tell her.]
[No! If we tell her, she'll shoot us! I like being not-shot!]
(I'll handle it. Later.)
I look at Val. She's watching me, her expression unreadable.
"Wade," she says. "Thank you. For saving her."
"Don't thank me yet," I say, trying to stand. I fail, falling back onto my butt. "We still have to deal with the dinosaurs. And the fact that I'm pretty sure I'm supposed to be at a dentist appointment in three years."
Val actually smiles. It's a small thing, but it's the most beautiful thing I've seen in a decade.
"Welcome to the family, Wade. It's a disaster."
"I wouldn't have it any other way," I say.
(But as I look at the vibrating red shard in my hand, I know one thing for sure: This relapse is only just beginning. And the next reload is going to be a hell of a lot more painful.)
[TO BE CONTINUED...]
(Okay, seriously? The Savage Land? Do you have any idea how much a safari suit costs in my size? And the mosquitoes! They're the size of Volkswagens! This is a nightmare! A prehistoric, humid, dino-poop-smelling nightmare!)