Logan's body trembled with both fear and anxiety as one of Lydecker's head men wheeled him down the hallway. Although he trusted Max's judgement in what she had said about Lydecker's plan blowing up in his face, Logan still didn't want to go through with the fake Eyes Only message.

Surely Zack would kill him if they ever met back up again-not that Zack liked Logan alive at the moment anyhow. But, if the former captain of the X5s ever found out that Logan had gone willfully along with Lydecker's psychotic plan, Logan could easily see himself being banned a traitor along with a prize package of neck snapping.

Logan grimaced, imagining the notion, and tightened his fingers around the edges of his wheelchair arms until his knuckles went white. Zack or no Zack, this was wrong.

Finally, on C floor, with hallways gray and bleak, Lydecker pushed a couple computer buttons on the wall to permit entry into a separate room, and with that gesture, two black doors slid open smoothly. He walked inside first, then turned around to Logan and smiled like a good host should.

"Welcome," he said to Logan, "to my personal office."

Logan felt his body drop inside his already twisting stomach; he couldn't turn back now. He, the helpless lamb, had just entered the wolf's den. And, there was no way out unless the wolf decided to free that lamb.

"My men have already set up all of your equipment for Eyes Only-at least all of the equipment that was at your house. I'm sure you know how it works." When Logan didn't respond, Lydecker asked, more stronger, "You know how it works-right?"

"Oh…yes…" Logan muttered as his head swayed. This had to be a nightmare. He would wake up soon enough and then Max would be sitting beside him, laughing. Lydecker would still be miles-preferably hundreds-away. Everything would normal again. Just wake up Logan, wake up…please.

"Good, good." Lydecker snapped his fingers and two of his henchmen saluted, coming quickly to attention. "Gentlemen, please wheel Mr. Cale over to the set-up and let him instruct you as to how it is done."

Logan felt a dull throbbing in the back of his mind as the wheelchair slid over the glistening linoleum floor…a floor like the basement where they kept those monsters. Max's clone was a monster and Max was gone. Maybe they had fed her to the anomalies. To that horrible clone of hers, letting it eat her innards like spaghetti. Oh God…

Sickened and nauseous, Logan fell forward out of his wheelchair as his body went slack. The floor was cold and hard against his cheek, but he made no move to attempt to get back up. Just let me die here, he thought. Those creatures are eating Max, and Zack's going to kill me…this is wrong…just plain wrong. Goes against everything.

Immediately, without waiting for an order from Lydecker, one of the men picked Logan roughly back up underneath the arms and threw him back in the wheelchair. It seemed as though all of the adrenaline and strength he had contained when he was first brought back to Manticore was gone.

It had to be nightmare.

"Mr. Cale," Lydecker said to Logan as he perched on the edge of the desk, fingering a sleek pistol that Logan had come to associate only with Manticore, "you don't seem to realize that Max's life hangs by a thread. You resist this, and I can very well cut that thread." He shrugged absentmindedly. "I've suffered enough losses recently. Somehow, I don't think that one more dead X5 is really going to hurt me that much." Lydecker paused for dramatic effects and to let Logan absorb his words. "Do you understand?"

Logan licked his lips before answering. Finally, he nodded, but added in an underbreath, "Where, exactly, is Max?"

"Mr. Cale, that's not your concern right now. Let it be known, though, that she is safe."

"How can I trust you?"

"How can you not?" Lydecker retorted and Logan quieted.

Placidly, with the face of an executioner, Logan led the men through the steps to begin Eyes Only.

But, suddenly, there was a problem. One of the computers wouldn't start, no matter how many times the button was pushed.

"Sir, this computer won't work," one of the men said to Lydecker.

"What do you mean 'it won't work'? It has to work. He was using it just before he came here," Lydecker responded, referring to "he" as Logan.

"You can try it, sir, but it's not working."

Snorting angrily that his plans would be disturbed, Lydecker pushed past Logan so rudely that Logan's head snapped in his chair, and Lydecker began attempting to start up the computer. When he couldn't get it to start, he looked around to the back to check if all the wires were plugged in. To his utmost shock, every single wire was meticulously cut. Not chewed by a mouse, but snapped with a pair of wire cutters.

"What the hell…" Lydecker hissed, knowing that Logan couldn't have done something like this. After all, Logan had been in his possession ever since they had arrived back at Manticore. Then, if Logan hadn't, who had?
Yet, Logan, who sat some distance away from his precious machinery, knew all too well who had damaged the computers. The only person who would've cut the wires because they didn't have enough knowledge to scramble the internal signal and who hated Lydecker with such a passion that they would've wanted to see him fail.

Logan covered his smirk as a single thought passed through his mind: Zack was back at Manticore.