Logan Howlett wanted the war to end so he could stop killing. When it ended, he did the strangest thing a man like him could do. He put down his rifle, walked away from the Howling Commandos, and went to Japan to build a quiet life. He married a woman with steady hands and a low laugh. For one year he woke without a gun in reach. Then Victor Creed came through the door. Logan knew him from the front lines. They shared the same slow-healing wounds and the same long teeth. Creed still wore his torn Army uniform, the one his own unit left him in when they marched off and left him for dead. He hunted soldiers now, one at a time, and he had found Logan. "You quit," Creed said. "Nobody quits." Logan's wife stepped between them with a kitchen knife. She was not a soldier, but she did not run. Creed grinned and threw her across the room. Logan caught him at the wall. They tore the house apart with claws and fists. When it was over, the house stood and Logan's wife lived, but Creed slipped out the broken window before Logan could finish him. "Same time next year," Creed called from the dark. He kept the promise. Every year, on the same cold night, Creed returned. Every year he beat Logan's wife and forced Logan to fight. Logan could not kill him. Creed healed the way Logan healed. So Logan tried a harder plan. He stopped waiting. On the fifth year he tracked Creed first, meaning to end it before the man reached his door. That was the mistake. Men in dark coats had been watching them both. They wanted two soldiers who could not die. When Logan and Creed met in an open field, the men sprang a trap. Gas dropped both of them where they stood. Logan woke strapped to a steel table, cold liquid metal flooding into his bones. The pain had no bottom. They bonded metal to his skeleton and gave him claws that slid from his knuckles, three on each hand, hard and bright. He screamed his wife's name. No one answered. They had erased her. They erased everything. Logan broke the straps and ran. He killed the men in the coats and burst into the snow with no name and no past. For a long time he lived as an animal in the wild north, walking on all fours, eating raw meat, hunting by smell. The men who found him next did not use gas. They used food and patience. They called themselves Department H. They cleaned him, fed him, and slowly gave his memory back, piece by piece, until he remembered the word Logan. They sat him down and slid a folder across the table. "First assignment," the man said. "There's a creature loose. Big. Green. Strong enough to level a town. We need you to bring it down." Logan looked at the metal claws in his fists. Then he picked up the folder.

The folder led Logan north into the snow. He tracked the green creature for three days, following broken trees and huge prints. On the fourth night he found it. The giant sat by a frozen stream, breathing hard. As Logan watched, the green skin drained away. The muscles shrank. A small man was left shivering in torn purple shorts. This was Bruce Banner. This was the monster Department H wanted dead. Logan drew his claws, then stopped. The man was crying into his hands. Logan had killed enough soldiers to fill a graveyard. He would not gut a weeping man in the dark. "You're the one they sent," Banner said. He did not look up. "They always send someone." "Not tonight," Logan said. Then the smell hit him. Rot and old blood. From the treeline came the wendigo, tall and white, teeth like knives. It had followed Banner's trail too. It lunged for the small man in the snow. Logan slammed into it. Claws met bone. The thing raked his chest and threw him into a tree. Behind him he heard the change begin. Banner's fear woke the other guy. Green muscle swelled and split the man's skin into a giant. They fought the wendigo together. Logan carved its legs while the Hulk crushed its ribs. The creature shrieked and died in the red snow. For one moment Logan laughed. He stood beside the giant, both of them alive, the monster dead. He felt something close to peace. Then the Hulk turned on him. The giant's fist caught Logan's jaw and sent him rolling. There was no reason left in those eyes, only rage. Logan got up. He had no choice now. They fought through the night and into the next day, across the frozen stream and up the slope. Logan healed as fast as the Hulk hit. Neither could win. As the second night came, Logan made his move. He leapt onto the giant's back and drove all six claws deep between the shoulders. The Hulk roared and threw himself backward into the mountain wall. Stone cracked. Snow broke loose above them and came down like a white flood. The avalanche buried them both. The Hulk clawed out first and vanished into the dark. Logan dug himself free a minute later, coughing snow, bleeding from a dozen wounds that were already closing. He sat in the wreck of the mountain and understood something. Department H had not saved him. They had handed him another war. They wanted him to murder a sick man who wept by a stream. He would not do it. He thought of the metal in his bones, of the wife they erased, of the man who put those claws in him. Victor Creed was still out there. That was the only fight left that meant something. Logan stood, faced south, and started walking. He was done being their assassin. He would hunt Creed. Then, maybe, he would be at peace.