BIOGRAPHY - Page 11
Sabretooth’s personality continued to regress to his old ways, leaving him savage, vicious, but with a sliver of morality remaining that separated him from who he was before the inversion. Still, it was enough to throw him off-guard when a young girl approached him and exploded into a flurry of cybernetic knives and mutant-hating epithets. The kid had smelled perfectly normal before the 
attack, and a confused Creed lost a hundred pounds of flesh and internal organs to her assault before retreating into the wilderness. He was found by Old Man Logan, a divergent future version of Wolverine who hooked up with the X-Men during the Terrigen crisis. Logan faced a similar attack, and these unlikely allies joined forces to discover who was hunting them now. [Weapon X (3rd series) #1-2]
A new Weapon X Program was hunting mutants and using genetic samples culled from them to improve each batch of cybernetic hunter-killers with the mutants’ own abilities. They were even expanding beyond mutants for their subjects – Creed and Logan learned Lady Deathstrike and Warpath were already prisoners and test subjects as they made contact with the hunted Domino and Amadeus Cho, the new Hulk. Cho was a rich and powerful super-genius, but his wide-eyed optimism and “no killing” ideas hampered the others. They tracked down Reverend William 
Stryker and his town-scale research facility in Serenity Hills, Texas. His top researcher Doctor Alba released two Adamantium and gamma-enhanced subjects, H-Beta and H-Alpha. The latter killed the former before escaping, and the rest of Stryker’s facility was destroyed. Cho refused to work with killers any further, but the others chose to remain together to hunt down Stryker, Alba, and H-Alpha. They even decided to take back the name Weapon X for themselves, christening their new team. [Weapon X (3rd series) #3-6, Totally Awesome Hulk #19-22]
Weapon H-Alpha was a former soldier and mercenary programmed with Stryker’s dogma, but the man within was trying to shake it off. Some of the Weapon X team like Logan and Warpath empathized with his brainwashing and wanted to try to talk things out. On the other side, Sabretooth thought Weapon H was too dangerous to roam free. He squabbled with Logan for command of the team and tried to rally support for his concerns. Unfortunately, nobody trusted Creed and most figured if they were killing dangerous killers who might turn on them one day, everybody would start with Sabretooth. Eventually, Stryker was disposed of, Alba was captured and Logan let Weapon H wander free to find the truth about his past. [Weapon X (3rd series) #7-11]
On shore leave from the team, Creed was sought out by his old sparring partner, Danny Rand. A mystical tome known as the Book of the Iron Fist was stolen from his apartment by somebody dressed as Sabretooth’s old partner Constrictor. Frank had passed away recently, and Victor didn’t appreciate the idea of someone stealing his colors, so he joined Iron Fist in hunting down 
the new Constrictor. Creed was surprised to discover the Constrictor was apparently Frank’s illegitimate son, who inherited the costume from his estate. The kid was infected by Iron Fist’s rival Rat of the 12 Plagues, and the new and improved Victor prioritized getting Frank’s son to the hospital more than fighting Rand’s fights or defending Frank’s legacy any further. [Iron Fist (1st series) #73-77]
Weapon X ultimately chose to remain together after the Weapon H mission, despite their… personality conflicts. They became an officially sanctioned team of hunters and trackers on call for the X-Men. [Phoenix Resurrection: The Return of Jean Grey #1] Sabretooth remained a wild card, however. When mutants were being hunted in Santo Marco, Weapon X discovered super-soldiers based on Weapon VII (a.k.a. Nuke) were responsible. Creed ran off half-cocked and 
freed the real Nuke from prison to turn him against the Nuke Platoon. However, he also pushed Weapon X to use Nuke’s amphetamine pills to juice themselves up, uniting Nuke and the platoon against them to protect their drugs. Still, Weapon X eventually got Nuke back on track with his original mission for the American government, which was to assassinate the anti-mutant dictator in charge of Santo Marco. [Weapon X (3rd series) #12-14]
Creed’s obsession with Wolverine still plagued him. When Lady Deathstrike learned from the Reavers that the original Logan’s tomb was empty, she recruited Sabretooth and Daken to investigate a possible sighting of Logan alive in Maybelle, Arizona. What they encountered was an experiment by the secretive group Soteira and a device that killed everyone in town with radiation before reviving them as zombies. Creed was stunned to see his son Graydon Creed among Soteira’s kill team in town, as was Deathstrike when she saw her late father. The device’s radiation hindered their healing factors, though, and they were forced to abandon Daken and the town without getting more information on Soteira and their powers over life and death. [Hunt for Wolverine: Claws of a Killer #1-4] In the meantime, Creed tried to satisfy himself by picking a fight with Old Man Logan on his birthday, reenacting his favorite pastime with the late, younger Wolverine. Even after all this time and all his changes, Victor still fixated on proving Logan was no better than him. [Weapon X (3rd series) #15-16]
[Note: Graydon’s body had been reanimated by a mutant named Persephone, who specialized in reviving the dead as drone-like agents. Only his body returned, however, not his soul, which would soon be relevant.]
Old Man Logan’s age was weighing on him, and his healing factor didn’t help him bounce back as in his younger years. Facing the imminent return to his own timeline, Logan chose to pass on leadership of Weapon X to Sabretooth. Warpath balked at the idea, but Logan believed there was a sliver of good struggling to express itself in Victor, and a mission like this would give him reason to focus on it. Victor hardly accepted the promotion graciously, which didn’t help Warpath’s 
trepidation. They were sent after S.I.C.K.L.E., a Russian state agency responsible for rounding up the country’s mutants for a labor camp. Unfortunately, one of the mutants was Omega Red, who had apparently escaped from the gulag. Sabretooth’s leadership style was to use Warpath and Domino as bait to draw out Omega Red, which only led to him being captured and dragged into the woods by the serial killer.
Despite his poor showing initially, Sabretooth had something to prove. He realized Omega Red wasn’t on a rampage but was being compelled against his will. Creed smelled nanotech in his system, and Arkady revealed his brother Vasily Rossovich was head of S.I.C.K.L.E. and wanted him to execute a pro-mutant general in the Russian army, Toma Zaslon. The nanobots forced him to fulfill his directives. Creed promised to help Omega Red get his freedom and take revenge on his brother. They learned General Zaslon was a closeted mutant, trying to enact change from within, and so Sabretooth negotiated a strategy with her and the rest of Weapon X. Lady Deathstrike neutralized Red’s nanobots, allowing him to get close enough to strike at Vasily. 
General Zaslon eliminated Vasily and assumed his position as head of S.I.C.K.L.E., while Creed and Deathstrike wiped the Russian mutant registry and the rest of S.I.C.K.L.E.’s intelligence files. Warpath couldn’t stomach Creed’s style and left, which was fine as Sabretooth intended to use this mission to build their reputation and let the new “Weapon X-Force” operate as paid mercenaries from that point forward. [Weapon X (3rd series) #17-21]
Sabretooth found Omega Red and Mystique willing to go along with the new Weapon X-Force modus operandi, joining him, Domino and Lady Deathstrike. Their first paid mission was actually 
one very close to Creed’s heart. In his absence, Monet had recovered and separated from her brother, but the bond with Emplate still haunted her and she vanished from the public eye. Her parents were willing to hire Weapon X-Force to bring her home safely. Domino and the others actually gave Sabretooth some good-natured teasing over how much he seemed genuinely concerned for Monet.
Unfortunately, the mission turned out to be a trap. William Stryker had sold his soul to the Devil in order to continue pursuing his hatred of mutants. With the help of Mentallo’s telepathic abilities, he crafted a cult known as the Church of Human Potential and recruited Monet as bait to lure in his old foes. Deadpool was also working as a hired gun for Stryker, but Sabretooth’s team succeeded in getting both Wade and Monet back on their side. Sabretooth took time out to apologize to 
Monet for not seeing things through with her and Emplate, and admitted she was one of the few who really treated him decently during his inversion. With the help of some other mutants he captured to torture and kill, they succeeded in killing Reverend Stryker. This would only be a temporary reprieve, however, for Stryker’s deal meant he would return from Hell time and again to torment mutantkind.
In order to get at Stryker in Hell, Weapon X-Force made a deal with Mystique’s ex, Azazel, to gain access to the netherworld. Going to Hell put their souls under the purview of the Devil himself, Marduk Kurios, and Creed’s team began to suffer their eternal torments. In his case, Sabretooth found himself terminally ill and bedridden in a hospital, where his “bill” was an accounting of every sin and bad act he ever performed. Victor tried to argue about his inversion, only to be pointed to the small tally of good acts the last few months accrued compared to more than a century of 
murder and depravity. As his inevitable fate began to sink in, Creed was continually annoyed by the tormented screaming of the patient next door. He found his son Graydon Creed, completely healthy but desperately convinced there was something wrong with him, because his parents abandoned him as a child. Graydon begged for Victor to take back the life he gave him. This too was Victor’s personal Hell.
Sabretooth and his team managed to reunite, and they found Marduk Kurios. Victor now wanted to free Graydon from Hell and prevent Stryker from returning as well. The Devil invited them to try, and showed how Stryker’s “church” were conducting the necessary sacrifices to allow him to return to Earth. Creed returned to Earth as his team fought to stop the flow of human sacrifices. Mentallo had been amplified by Reverend Stryker’s arcane power, and his telepathy started to strip away Sabretooth’s human consciousness, leaving only the animal within. Victor fought back on instinct, but his body ended up being the final sacrifice. By the rules involved, however, Victor chose to make his sacrifice on behalf of Graydon Creed, not William Stryker. Graydon ascended into the light while Victor and Stryker remained in Hell.
Interestingly enough, the Devil was unsatisfied with his new acquisition. Victor Creed’s noble sacrifice for the renewal of another made his arrival in Hell unpalatable. And while the delicious 
irony of his fate could have been a source of torment, his mind regressed to an animal state left him unable to appreciate the torture Marduk Kurios might have in store for him. Instead, the Devil chose to return Sabretooth to life, giving him another opportunity to die and properly earn his place in Hell the next time. Feral and virtually mindless, Sabretooth was released into the wilds of Saskatchewan, the Devil confident they would meet again in time. [Weapon X (3rd series) #22-27]