Logan’s day had now hit a whole new level on the strangeness meter. The Rogue chick was helping him. She wasn’t supposed to be helping him. She was one of them. At least he had thought she was. The fact that she had made the doctors go away was making him think otherwise.
“Why are you helping me?” Logan mumbled, staring intently at her pale face. He was searching for some sign that there was an ulterior motive to what she was doing.
“Ah’m helpin’ ya ‘cause Ah want t’. ‘Cause yer Logan an’ Ah love ya,” the Rogue chick told him. “Ah know that ya don’t remember me right now, Logan, but it doesn’t change the fact that Ah love ya.”
Logan rolled his eyes, flexing his wrists experimentally. “That’s the most interesting tactic they’ve used yet. Is this to get my defenses down so they can catch me off guard.”
The Rogue chick shook her head. “No, Ah’m tellin’ ya this ‘cause it’s true, Logan. Ah met ya almost seven years ago an’ we’ve been married fer almost five o’ those years. There’s also the fact that we have two beautiful little boys who have absolutely no clue what’s goin’ on an’ are gonna be heart broken when they find out that their Daddy doesn’t remember them.”
“That’s not true,” Logan ground out, turning his head away from the woman with the two white streaks in her hair. “You are not my wife. My wife doesn’t look anything like you.”
The Rogue chick made a pained sound, tears springing to her eyes. Her big brown eyes darting around wildly, she stumbled away from the table, making a series of sobbing noises. She was mumbling something, too. Had it not been for his heightened senses, Logan would not have heard what she was saying.
“He had a wife. He had a family. We don’t matter anymore. We don’t matter....”
Logan felt something in his heart clench when she bumped into the wall and slowly slid to the ground. For a moment, he wondered if what she had said was true. That they loved each other. Were married.... That they had children together. Logan searched his mind for any memories of the Southern beauty. He wanted to find something that he could tell her to make the tears stop. She was sobbing loudly by this point and it was created almost a physical pain in him to watch it.
“Look, kid, I’m sorry that I don’t remember you.... What?”
She was staring at him then, a shocked expression on her face. Her sobs were silenced almost instantly, though the tears still continued to fall. “Ya called me ‘kid.’ Ah wasn’t imaginin’ it, right? Ya called me ‘kid’?”
Logan started at her as though she was insane. “So I called that? What of it?”
“That’s what ya called me when we first met. Ya still sometimes call me that t’ this day,” she told him, a watery smile on her face.
For some reason, hearing him call her that meant a lot to her. She took several deep breaths then pushed against the wall until she was standing again. Wiping away the remaining tears from her cheeks, it looked to Logan as though she hardened herself. All emotion left her eyes and her features and she was just... there.
Indifferent.
That wasn’t good. People who didn’t care about anything were dangerous. They did things without completely considering the consequences
“Please, let me go,” Logan begged, hoping that the emotions she felt for him weren’t false. “I just want to get out of this facility and go home.”
There was a flicker of motion, but it was gone before Logan could identify it. “Ya are home, Logan. We’re in the medical lab below the mansion. We’ve been livin’ here fer close t’ seven years. Since we first met, actually.”
“Look, kid, I don’t remember that,” Logan reminded her, hating the pained look that crossed her features, but knowing that it needed to be said.
“Ya were in a buildin’ that exploded,” she told him, giving up her mask of indifference and allowing the pain to be clearly displayed on her features. “Ah’m pretty sure that’s how ya lost yer memory. Gawd knows ya were half dead when Ah finally found ya. If Ah hadn’t been lucky as hell an’ found ya they’d still be tryin’ t’ dig what was left o’ ya outta that mess.”
A deadly silence filled the room until the indifferent look appeared on her face once again.
“But since ya obviously don’t give two shits ‘bout that, Ah guess Ah’ll just let ya get about yer business,” she muttered callously as she set about releasing him from his restraints. Whatever gentleness and caring she had been exhibiting earlier was completely gone. “Ah’m not gonna force ya t’ remember things that ya don’t wanna remember. So ya can go wherever the fuck ya want an’ Ah’ll worry ‘bout explainin’ t’ those two little boys up there why their Daddy left them. Yer completely relieved o’ yer obligations t’ me, to Hunter an’ t’ Chase. We’ll be just fine without ya.”
As if to prove her point, as soon as she finished releasing him, she grabbed hold of his left hand and savagely yanked the silver wedding band from his ring finger.
“There. Yer free now. Hope ya find whatever the fuck yer lookin’ fer,” she muttered angrily as she turned and stalked out of the room.
Alarms started going off in Logan’s mind.
This was wrong. Completely and utterly wrong. Logan didn’t know why, but something inside of him kept screaming at him to stop her. That tiny, almost non-existant voice was drowned out by the much louder voice insisting that he go home.
His wife was waiting for him.
That thought was enough to force Logan into action.
He was going home.
Then why did he feel so guilty about it. Even though he had absolutely no memory of the girl, Logan still felt bad about what he was doing to her. The tears that she had shed for him were unnerving. He didn’t remember her so it wasn’t right that she remembered him.
Forcing any thoughts of the doe-eyed woman from his mind, Logan stood on shaky legs. It was a next to impossible task while her scent lingered in the room and the corridor beyond. He could smell her distinctive shampoo and it reminded him of how much he had hurt her. He didn’t remember her, but the knowledge that he had hurt her made him uneasy. It was as though he had a keep-her-happy instinct up there right next to his doctors-are-evil one.
It didn’t matter, though, whether he felt bad for hurting her or not, he was still leaving-- fast as possible. The entire place gave him the creeps, he wanted to be gone as soon as he could.
As he was walking down the hallway, Logan was overcome with an incredible pain and fell to his knees. Scary part was, the pain wasn’t his. Logan was familiar enough with pain to know when it was his and that most certainly wasn’t. It wasn’t even a physical pain. This pain was emotional.... Almost as though there was a scream echoing in his mind.
When it died down, Logan struggled to his feet and followed the girl’s scent towards the elevator. He knew that he should probably try to do something about the fact that he was wearing only a simple pair of shorts, but he was too eager to get out to worry about that.
Logan was actually going to get to see the outside world again.
Stalking cautiously down the corridor, Logan kept all of his senses on alert. He wanted to be sure that no one attempted to stop him on his way out. Nothing was going to keep him from getting home. Not now that he was finally free.
As soon as he stepped in front of what he assumed was the elevator, the doors slid open automatically. Glancing around nervously, Logan flared his nostrils, trying to determine whether someone else was in the vicinity. The only thing he could smell was the woman with the two white streaks in her hair.
Logan shook his head, once again forcing her from his mind. He didn’t like the fact that she kept popping up into his mind when he least expected it.
“There’s no fuckin’ way she was telling the truth,” Logan muttered as he stepped into the elevator. “It’s all just some fucked up lie to get me to let my guard down.”
Logan’s entire body jerked when the elevator started its upward motion. He hadn’t even pushed any buttons, but it was still moving. Taking him up the main floor, he hoped. The sooner he got to the main floor, the sooner he could get out. That was all he cared about. All that Logan wanted at that point was to go home. He missed his little cottage in the mountains. It wasn’t much, but he had always considered it home.
The elevator stopped with the same suddenness that it had started with. His body crouched in a defensive posture, Logan waiting for the doors to open. He wasn’t sure what he expected to see on the other side, but the lavish interior of what appeared to be a rather large building wasn’t it. Whoever owned the building obviously had loads of cash to spare.
Logan surveyed the interior of the hallway he was now in, locating the door which was about thirty feet away. Keeping himself pressed against the wall, Logan inched his way to a nearby niche that would give him a better view of the hallway. He was about halfway there when he heard two little voices drifting from the opposite direction.
“I wanna go see Daddy.”
“But we can’t go. Daddy’s in the downstairs where Dr. Hank lives.”
“Mommy takes us downstairs all the time. An’ I wanna go see Daddy.”
“Maybe we should go ask Mommy.”
“Don’t be a baby, Chase.”
“I’m not being a baby, stupid.”
“We can go show Daddy Mortimer. He’ll make Daddy feel better.... Mortimer! Come back here! Bad, Mortimer!”
If his sense of smell could be trusted, Mortimer was a frog. Sure enough, a couple seconds later, a bright green frog jumped into the niche where he was hiding. Before he had time to scare the frog off, Logan came face to face with a pair of little boys who were staring at him with the same wide eyes that the dark-haired woman had.
“Daddy!”
“Yer all better!”