Being "born again" is highly overrated. The Bible makes it sound like a spiritual cleansing, a fresh start, a dip in a holy river. In reality, it's more like being a giant, sentient blister that just popped.
My skin is "new-car" fresh, which sounds great until you realize that "new-car" fresh means every breeze feels like a blowtorch and every drop of humidity is a personal insult. I'm standing in a prehistoric swamp, naked as a jaybird—if jaybirds were covered in jagged, star-shaped burn scars and had a face that looked like a topographical map of a dumpster fire.
[Look on the bright side, Wade. No tan lines.]
[I feel a draft. Is it a draft? Or did a pterodactyl just fly past our butt-cheeks? I hope it was a small one. I have delicate sensibilities!]
(Shut up, White. I'm trying to maintain some dignity here. Or at least find a leaf big enough to cover the 'Wilson Estate.')
I'm currently squatting in the mud of the Savage Land, staring at the crater where my family—or my variant family, or my hallucinated family—used to be. The thermal detonator did its job. It vaporized the red-metal-virus-version of me, but it also sent Val and Ellie fleeing into a jungle filled with things that view "humans" as a low-carb snack option.
I stand up, my knees clicking like a pair of castanets. I have no swords. No guns. No pouches. I am a mercenary without a merc. I'm just a 'nary.'
"Okay, Wilson," I mutter, my voice raspy and thin. "Step one: Get dressed. Step two: Find the girls. Step three: Murder Alistair Smythe with a very dull object. Maybe a spoon. A rusty grapefruit spoon."
I start walking. Every step is a lesson in agony. My feet, uncalloused and soft, scream as I step on sharp stones and prehistoric burrs.
(Hey, Author. Quick question: Is this the 'Survival' arc? Because I didn't sign up for Man vs. Wild. I signed up for Man vs. Ninjas. If Bear Grylls shows up and tells me to drink my own pee, I'm quitting the serial. I don't care how many chapters are left. My contract has a 'No Urophagia' clause. I think. I didn't actually read it. It was written in legal-ese and blood.)
[We have more pressing concerns than your bladder, Wade. Specifically, the three Deinonychuses currently stalking us from the tall ferns to our left.]
[Ooh! Raptors! They're like the ninjas of the Jurassic! But with more feathers and better teamwork!]
I stop. I don't turn my head. I can hear them—the low, reptilian churring, the rustle of leaves, the clicking of those oversized sickle-claws against the damp earth. They're fast, they're smart, and they've definitely noticed that the red-and-black chew toy is currently out of its protective packaging.
"Nice doggies," I whisper. "You don't want to eat me. I'm 90% cancer and 10% high-fructose corn syrup. You'll get a stomach ache. You'll be bloated for weeks. Think of the gas!"
The first raptor leaps.
It's a blur of brown and green feathers, its jaws snapping inches from my face. I roll to the right—yeesh, the mud is cold on my backside—and scramble to my feet.
The second raptor lunges from the side. I don't have a blade, so I do the next best thing: I use tactical absurdity. I grab a large, jagged piece of obsidian from the mud—likely a shard of the volcanic rock unearthed by the explosion—and I jam it into the raptor's open maw as it closes in.
CRACK.
The raptor shrieks, its teeth shattering against the stone. It tumbles past me, clawing at its throat.
"One-zero, Wade!" I yell, though my victory is short-lived.
The third raptor—the Big One, the Alpha—doesn't lung. It circles. It's watching me with eyes that look uncomfortably intelligent. It sees my nakedness. It sees my lack of claws. It thinks I'm a pushover.
"Mistake," I growl.
I don't wait for it to move. I charge. I'm a 190-pound slab of regenerating meat, and I'm pissed off. I tackle the raptor, my arms wrapping around its muscular neck. We hit the ground, rolling through the ferns in a flurry of scales, feathers, and very pale skin.
The raptor's hind leg kicks out, its sickle-claw slicing a deep furrow through my thigh. I don't flinch. I've had worse injuries from opening a bag of SunChips. My healing factor, still raw and hyper-active from the 're-spawn,' starts sealing the wound before the blood even hits the ground.
I find a soft spot under the raptor's jaw and I squeeze. I squeeze with all the frustration of a man who just lost his daughter, his girlfriend, and his favorite pair of Katanas.
Snap.
The raptor goes limp.
I roll off it, gasping for air. My chest is covered in raptor blood—bright, hot, and smelling like old chicken.
[Well, that was... visceral.]
[Do we get to wear it now? Like Kraven the Hunter? I want a raptor-hat! It'll be the latest 2026 trend: 'Prehistoric-Core'!]
(Actually, White, you're onto something.)
Ten minutes later, I am officially 'dressed.'
I've skinned the raptor using the obsidian shard and some very messy, very amateur taxidermy. I now have a raptor-skin loincloth held together by twisted vines, and a pair of makeshift boots made from the creature's hide. I look like a cross between Tarzan and a casualty from a meat-packing plant.
"I look fabulous," I say, admiring my reflection in a puddle. "I look like I'm about to headline a very niche, very violent Coachella."
I pick up a long, sturdy rib-bone from the raptor's carcass. I sharpen the end against the obsidian until it's a jagged, ivory spear. It's not a katana, but it'll do for 'stabby-stabby' purposes.
I start moving North again. The "itch" in my scars is back—the red tint I saw earlier is pulsing in rhythm with my heartbeat. Smythe's virus didn't die with the explosion; it just went underground. It's waiting for a signal.
"He's still here," I whisper to the trees. "In the air. In the dirt. He's taking over the Savage Land, isn't he?"
[The Sentinel we saw earlier was just a scout, Wade. If Smythe has access to the High Evolutionary's old facilities, he could be mass-producing an army of techno-organic hybrids as we speak.]
[Ooh! Robot Dinosaurs! Like 'Dinobots'! Can we get a Grimlock? I want to ride a robot T-Rex!]
"If we find a Grimlock, White, you can have all the oil you can drink," I mutter.
I crest a ridge and stop.
Below me, nestled in a valley of smoking vents and bubbling tar pits, is a structure that definitely wasn't here the last time I visited the Savage Land. It's a sprawling complex of black glass and pulsating red lights. It looks like a Borg cube had a baby with a Gothic cathedral.
And standing at the gates, patrolling in perfect, mechanical unison, are rows of Mark-X Slayers. But they've been upgraded. They have organic components—dinosaur muscles woven into their chassis, reptilian eyes mounted on their sensors.
"The Hive," I say.
(Reader, usually this is where the hero comes up with a clever plan. They use stealth, they wear a disguise, they wait for nightfall. But I'm Deadpool. And I'm currently wearing a raptor's butt as a skirt.)
"Maximum effort," I sigh.
I slide down the ridge, my bone-spear held tight. I'm not going for the gates. I'm going for the ventilation shafts. I've seen enough 80s action movies to know that every evil lair has a shaft big enough for a grown man to crawl through while making quips.
I reach the perimeter, ducking behind a giant, rusted rib-cage of some long-dead beast. The Slayers are close—I can hear the hum of their servos and the wet squelch of their organic parts.
Suddenly, a hand reaches out from the shadows and grabs my arm.
I spin, my bone-spear aimed at the intruder's throat.
"Easy, Wade," a voice whispers.
It's Cable.
He looks like he's been through a war—mostly because he has. His metal arm is sparked and dented, his gray hair is wild, and his glowing eye is flickering like a dying lightbulb. He's holding a massive, futuristic rifle that looks like it was cobbled together from a microwave and a jet engine.
"Nathan!" I chirp, lowering the spear. "You look terrible! Did you try that new 'Future-Aging' cream I recommended? It's clearly working!"
"Wade, how are you alive?" Cable asks, his eyes scanning my raptor-skin outfit with a mix of horror and pity. "I saw the detonator go off. You should be a fine mist in the atmosphere."
"I'm a 'fine mist' enthusiast, Nate. It's very refreshing for the pores. Where are Val and Ellie?"
Cable's expression darkens. He pulls me deeper into the shadows of the rib-cage. "Smythe caught them. He used a localized dampener field on the teleport-exit. I managed to get away, but they're inside that complex. He's using Ellie to power the 'Evolutionary Array.'"
"The what-now? Sounds like a bad prog-rock band."
"It's a machine that can rewrite the DNA of every living thing in the Savage Land simultaneously," Cable explains, his voice tight. "Smythe isn't just building an army. He's turning the entire ecosystem into a single, sentient network. A techno-organic hive-mind. And Ellie is the battery."
My grip on the bone-spear tightens. I can feel the red virus in my chest flare up, responding to the proximity of the complex. My vision flickers red for a second.
"He's hurting her, isn't he?" I ask. My voice isn't 'Wacky' anymore. It's low. It's the voice that makes people realize why I'm the most dangerous man in the world.
"He's tapping into her kinetic output," Cable says. "It's grueling. She won't last another hour."
"Then we go in," I say. "Right now. No plan. No backup. Just you, me, and my raptor-kilt."
Cable looks at me, then at my bone-spear. He sighs, reaching into a pouch on his back. He pulls out two objects and tosses them to me.
My Katanas.
"I found them near the crater," he says. "I figured you'd feel naked without them. More naked than you already are."
I catch the hilts, the familiar weight of the steel sending a jolt of pure adrenaline through my system. I slide them into the vine-loops of my loincloth.
"Thanks, Nate. Now, about that microwave-gun of yours... does it have a 'Popcorn' setting? Because things are about to get very 'explosive-y.'"
[Ooh! The band is back together!]
[The Grumpy Grandpa and the Naked Ninja! This is the buddy-cop movie the 2020s deserved!]
(Shut up, boys. We have a daughter to save.)
"One condition, Wade," Cable says, leveling his rifle. "If the virus takes you over again... if you turn on me... I won't hesitate. I'll put a bullet in your brain and leave you for the Slayers."
I look him right in his flickering yellow eye.
"If that happens, Nathan... I'll be disappointed if you don't."
We move out of the shadows, two relics of a broken timeline, charging toward a fortress of black glass.
Above us, the sky over the Savage Land begins to turn a bruised, sickly purple. A low hum vibrates through the air, making the leaves shiver and the dinosaurs wail in the distance.
The Evolutionary Array is warming up.
(Hey, Reader. You might want to buckle up. The next chapter is going to be a real 'tear-jerker.' And by 'tear,' I mean I'm going to tear Alistair Smythe into so many pieces they'll have to use a microscope to find his remains.)
[TO BE CONTINUED...]
(Wait! Nate! Do you have any spare pants in that future-pouch? Seriously! The chaffing is real! I'm getting a rash in places a mercenary should never have a rash!)