"You feel stuck on the outside, looking inside
Wishing this life wasn't your life
And you think you're damaged way beyond repair
Well you're not so far that I can't get to where you are"-
"Invisible"
"Worried about the mission?" Laura asked. Logan shook his head, eyes still on the road. The little gps computer showed they were 86.7 miles from their destination. Outside, snow was falling, though not too hard.
"Thinking." Logan said shortly. Laura was quiet for a few minutes. Two claws popped out of her right hand and she inspected them, then they slid back into her hand, the slits healing and Laura licking the blood off the healed cut. Some people thought it was a weird fetish thing—Laura just did it because it was practical. You couldn't always be wiping blood on things, and sometimes doing so left a trail for people to follow, or DNA.
"You're thinking about me, you, and Mallory." Laura said, utterly certain. Logan glanced at her, but didn't comment. "You're wondering what it would be like. If Mallory was your wife, and we were a family."
"I think you're projecting." Logan said gruffly. Laura shrugged.
"Professor Xavier was teaching us about the Odyssey." Laura said. "In one of our classes."
"I read it once." Logan said shortly, his nylon black jacket whispering slightly as he shifted, stretched in his seat. "Long time ago."
"It opens on the island of Calypso, a Greek goddess." Laura said, in the air of someone thinking through a deep philosophic problem. "Odysseus is offered immortality, if he will stay with the goddess and be her lover."
"Yep, goddesses are a little more bold pursuing men." Logan remarked, the Charger fairly quiet as they turned off the expressway, onto a smaller road.
"But Odysseus refused. Because he had to go home—because who a person is is strongly linked to their home, their love, their family." Laura said, adjusting her seat back slightly, crossing her legs. Where she had gotten those odd military style boots, Logan didn't know. "For Odysseus to choose immortality, he would have lost his identity. Eternity would have been meaningless, because Odysseus wouldn't have been Odysseus. He would have been nothing, and had nothing."
"Good to know you're getting a quality education." Logan commented sarcastically. Laura sighed, started to talk, but Logan cut her off. "I get the point, kid. Believe me, I get it. I've gotten it for a long time."
"Still haven't solved it?" Laura asked. Logan looked exasperated.
"It ain't an easy problem to solve." He said. "No one's done it before. There aren't any answers, for people like us. Fighting is the closest answer I've gotten. It keeps me going.
Let me ask you—how many of the kids at the school could do better? Laura, in 80 years, you're not going to look a day over 30. And it will be the same, every decade after that. You're going to see your friends die, of age, in battle, accidents. You'll see nations change, and what you knew will pages in a history book, gone."
The padding inside car absorbed his outburst, and Laura was silent. He glanced at her after a minute. She was staring out the window, facing away from him. Regret crept up on him. It was too much for a kid. And there were no answers… none that he had found, anyway. Chuck was brilliant, that was for sure. But he doubted the Professor had anymore answers than anyone else.
"Do you even want to live?" Laura asked quietly. Seconds ticked by, as the trees and buildings whipped past them.
"I want a reason to live, kid, not just to keep going." Logan said. "That's a big part of why I adopted you. That's why I fight."
Two hours later they was pulling in front of the little diner. Laura wouldn't have called it grungy, but it wasn't stylish, either. Probably had a profit margin that barely supported the owner.
"You can drive if I need you too, right?" Logan asked. Laura nodded, looking around. He was feeling his mood rise a bit, and Laura looked more alert, sharper. They were in their natural element. "Good." Logan left the keys in the ignition. "Wait here. If things go bad, use your head." She nodded again, and Logan got out of the car, and strolled into the diner, sitting at the bar and waiting a good ten seconds before glancing around.
"What can I get you?" A waitress asked him.
"Coffee, please." Logan said. Mallory was in the corner booth to his left, her back to the wall, talking to a guy Logan didn't recognize.
"You're really not getting in the car, are you?" The man asked, sounding exasperated.
"No." Mallory said flatly.
Logan appreciated that he didn't have to strain to hear the conversation 10 feet away. He glanced over again, and Mallory's eyes met his for a fraction of a second, not long enough to give her 'friend' a hint. The waitress walked over to them, and set a cup of coffee down in front of the man, before walking off.
"You got any—" Mallory began, only to be cut short as the man threw the coffee in her face, smacked her, grabbed her head, hit it to the table, sending her to the floor. The guy had been good, Logan noted. He had been acting exhausted, annoyed, but not hostile, and had attacked quickly.
Logan grabbed the man by the shoulder just as he was swinging a blow at Mallory. The guy spun, punched him in the face, and recoiled in pain as his fist struck a metal jaw. Logan punched a straight, he blocked, and Logan hit him in the jaw with a hook. The man collapsed to the ground, unconscious. Mallory paused to frisk him, removing a compact Glock from a 'small of back' holster, before checking the pulse.
"Friend of yours?" Logan asked.
"We need to go." Mallory said. "You bring a car?"
"What do you think?" Logan sighed as they left the little diner. "Charger, it's unlocked." He walked over to the driver's side just as Mallory reached the passenger side, freezing when she saw Laura riding shotgun. "Backseat, Mal." Logan said. She complied. The engine roared to life, and Logan exited the parking lot with a little more speed that icey roads allowed most people.
"Mal, Laura. Laura, Mal." Logan said, the vehicle smoothly hitting 60 miles an hour, until a pothole jarred everything.
"Wow." Mallory said, sounding amused. "Mr. 'I'm the best there is at what I do' has a kid now?"
"I'm adopted." Laura said matter-of-factly.
"What's going on, Mal?" Logan said sharply. "That guy was a pro. Who'd you manage to piss off?"
"Unfortunately, my last job wasn't what it seemed." She sighed. Laura could see why Logan would like her. She had the self-assured demeanor of an accomplished fighter, and was remarkably beautiful for a woman in that line of work. Most women in military or police were... well, average, or ugly. Mallory was in shape, looked like she was solid enough to hold her own in a fist fight, and stunning, aside from a healing cut above her right eyebrow that was hidden with makeup.
"As in..?" Logan said impatiently. "You want my help, you talk, now."
"It's sad, how cliché it was." Mallory groaned. "I was on a protection detail, and as luck had it, someone figured out a route we were taking and blew our man away with a Barret .50. And guess who was supposed to be found dead in her hotel room with evidence she betrayed our protectee, and was then killed by the assassins to tie up loose ends?"
"You?" Laura asked mildly.
"Got it in one." Mallory said. "Problem was, a teammate was there to insure that I was found dead, except I won, and couldn't dispose of the body. So the Spanish police want me for murder, and now it seems my old boss has spread the word to American police that I'm a dangerous killer…"
"Would that be why I see a road block ahead?" Logan remarked. Mallory squinted at the far off cars, then grimaced.
"That might be for me, it might just be a sobriety checkpoint. I get out and meet you around?" Mallory proposed. Logan and Laura shook their heads.
"To close, they'd see and be on us." Laura said, looking ahead at the police. "If we turn around, they'll chase us. We go through."
"Only option." Logan agreed, slowing down a bit to buy them an extra few seconds. "Alright, we're a family. Got it?"
"Mallory's not old enough to be my mom!" Laura objected, to which Mallory embraced her and gave her a rasberry on the cheek, making Laura shriek with laughter and shove her away. They pulled up the police stop. Logan gave Laura a stern look and held up a hand for her to be quiet as he rolled the window down.
"What's up, officer?" Logan asked. State police, three of them. Visibly only armed with handguns, maybe a shotgun or ar-15 in a car. The guy tried to lean forward a bit, look past Logan, and another officer was walking around the side of the car. Laura was making idiotic teenage conversation with Mallory, but Logan could practically feel them both tensing.
"License please." The officer said. He was a typical cop. Probably mid-forties, pudgy, heavy build, and clean shaven. Logan reached for his wallet, taking his time with a fake ID.
"Mind tellin' me what this is about?" Logan asked, still holding his wallet, slowly opening it up. "Sobriety checkpoint, or…?" The officer scowled at him, glanced at his partner. Logan couldn't see, but he guessed a signal was exchanged, or maybe just a look. Maybe it was that Logan was asking questions. A fair amount of cops were good people. But most would cover for the cops that planted evidence, or went on power-trips and beat up citizens who didn't deserve it.
"Looking for a fugitive." The cop said. Logan handed over his driver's license, which was not an in-state license. A good fake ID wasn't hard to buy, though cops learned well how to tell fakes from real deals. But if you had a fake ID from another state, it helped your odds of slipping by. The cop glanced at Logan's fake license, and handed it back.
"Well, if we see anyone odd, we'll make sure to report it." Logan said, forcing a smile and adjusting his seat to indicate he was about to go. He glanced at Laura, who was still talking animatedly about a boy at school. "Ana, could you stop talking for just a minute?" He asked, sounding exasperated, before turning back to the officer. "Thanks for the heads up about the fugitive, hope you catch him."
"Ma'am, could I see some ID?" The officer said, looking past Logan, at Mallory. She smiled sheepishly.
"Sorry, I forgot my purse at home." Mal said. The officer glanced at his clipboard again, then moved. Logan shifted the car and slammed on the gas as the officer was reaching for his sidearm. The engine roared, and they shot past the squad cars at dangerous speeds.
"That is what happens when you get made." Logan snapped. "Should've bleached your hair."
"I owe you." Mallory said gratefully, looking back as the squad cars swung onto the road, now a quarter mile behind them.
"Got that right." Logan said, glancing at his GPS. "Now we play evasion."
"Can we lose them?" Laura asked. Logan just shrugged, eyes focused on the road.
"Ask me again in five minutes."
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