He finds himself hunted by a contract killer, the "Mongoose", who works for a mysterious organization known as XX, which aims to mount a coup against the US government.

The third volume finds Amos, still pursuing his investigation, realizing that XIII was a body double for the real Steve Rowland.

Volume four begins with Amos finding that Carrington had invented the Tanner identity and suspecting him of being part of the conspiracy to kill the President.

XIII, under the name of Ross Tanner, has been hidden by Carrington in a SPADS training facility in the fictitious Latin American country of San Miguel.

XIII, Barnowsky, and Jones escape an assassination attempt by McCall but end up lost in the San Miguel jungle.

Rowland was shot by the Mongoose, but he escaped, mortally wounded, and died shortly after telling Kim what had happened.

Heideger and Carrington then came up with a plan to make XX believe that Rowland had survived, hoping to attract the Mongoose's killers, arrest them, and follow their trail to the conspirators.

At the start of volume five, XIII, Jones, and Barnowsky kidnap the Marquis de Préseau, a rich French land owner in San Miguel, to steal his jet to fly back to the US.

Sheridan helps XIII infiltrate the military's center of operations, and, together with President Galbrain, manage to stop the conspiracy at the last moment.

At the end of the story, XIII believes he has found his old identity as Jason Fly and is prepared to continue his life normally, even if his memories have not yet returned.

Volumes six and seven bring XIII to Greenfalls, a snowy town in the Rocky Mountains, where the story revolves around the fate of his father in the McCarthian 1950s.

In volume eight, XIII is approached by President Sheridan to become a special agent and is charged with finding Number I.

After passing on this information to XIII, they become convinced that Sheridan was in fact Number I, and used the XX to have his brother killed and propel himself to the Presidency.

Sheridan had the child kidnapped to force Kim to marry Rowland, to betray Jason when Heideger's plan threatened to expose him as Number I, and have him lured onto his yacht where XIII was shot by the Mongoose.

In the following volumes, the action takes place in and around Costa Verde, a small fictional nation in Central America where XIII is led to believe he once led a revolution under the identity of "El Cascador", although El Cascador is supposedly dead.

In a televised "trial", Sheridan is revealed to the American public as Number I, with XIII and the Mongoose testifying.

While in exile in Costa Verde, XIII and Mullway attempt to find a treasure hidden by their ancestors somewhere in Mexico.

Giordino, meanwhile, fabricates evidence claiming that XIII is Seamus O'Neill, an IRA operative who trained under Fidel Castro.

Promotion for the series included a special draw by the French national lottery in 2000 with 1,500,000 tickets and a €13,000 grand prize.

[5] XIII was originally written in French, and it was translated into several languages, including English, Dutch, German, Polish, Swedish, Tamil, Serbo-Croatian, and Italian.

In 2015, in Portugal, Portuguese newspaper "Público" and "Edições Asa II, S.A." published the, then, complete edition of "XIII" in double volumes, each containing two titles.

XIII was adapted by Ubisoft as a 2003 first-person shooter video game released for the PlayStation 2, GameCube, Xbox, the PC, and the Apple Macintosh.

A sequel, titled XIII ²: Covert Identity, was released as a side-scrolling platform game for mobile phones by Gameloft in October 2007.

[14][15] In November 2011, Anuman Interactive released an adventure game based on the series, titled XIII: Lost Identity.

[17] Due to the remake's poor reception, Microids replaced PlayMagic with the French studio Tower Five to "rework the entire game", with the improved version released on September 13, 2022 as a free update.