A/N: You'll have to excuse the extreme delay in updates on all of my stories. I really dont have an excuse other than a complete lack in motivation. If I didnt have to take all the time to convert everything into a text file, I might be a little more motivated, but I digress. I have just got done a long day of work, and bloody hell am I tired! I am going to post at least 3 chapters, I hope you enjoy them. I have up to chapter 12 done, and 13 is halfway done. Its going to be about 50 chapters in all, so I hope you bear with me. Thanks to all my supporters who have reviewed, I really do appriceate it. More thanks to my beta's who have put up with all my bullshit. Anna, you kept this chapter from being a pile of crap, so I thank you.


Chapter Four
When Logan surfaced, dazed and disoriented, he found himself sitting; his hands bound behind his back, sitting slumped over in a chair, a long metal table directly in front of him. The only light in the room came from a naked bulb directly over his head.
Speaking of his head, it was throbbing, a pulsing pain coursing through his skull focused on the base of his neck where he'd been struck.
Logan had no more time to gauge his surroundings, as the door cracked open, bright light spilling into the room momentarily as a figure dressed in a dark suit stepped in, shutting the door behind him. "Mr. Cale, I see you're awake."
"What the hell is going on?" Logan asked, hoping his voice didn't sound as weak as he felt.
"Oh, you wanted to meet with me right. Donald Lydecker. I'd offer to shake your hand, but" Lydecker gestured to Logan's bound hands as he sat down in the chair across the table, "you seem to be incapacitated. How's the head?" He asked with mock sympathy.
"Fine." Logan said, uselessly trying to free his hands. "Tell me, why do I get the feeling that this isn't going to be the average meeting I expected it to be."
"Your problem, this should teach you to dig into matters that you shouldn't."
"Oh, but you'd be surprised how little I know." Logan said, as his brain cleared his mind became to calculate, wondering how exactly he was going to get out of this situation.
"Tell me what you do know." Lydecker said coolly, dropping the sarcastic concern and crossing his hands.
Logan decided that it would probably be best to deal straight with this guy. He seemed slightly serious, being willing to kidnap a semi-famous journalist to keep whatever it was that he had uncovered from being exposed. "A little over a week ago, I witnessed what I believed to be a enhanced human prototype, the sort of theoretical prototype that you spoke about at the University of California last year."
"Is that all you know?" Lydecker asked after considering this for a moment.
"That is all I am willing to say at the moment." Logan said easily.
Lydecker reached inside his jacket and pulled out a small but deadly looking handgun. "I suggest you tell me what you know Mr. Cale. I have no problem with killing you." He said in a low voice as he pulled back the hammer and pointed to gun at Logan's chest.
Logan leaned forward in his chair. "Well Mr. Lydecker, I figure you have two options here." He said in a casual voice, quickly gaining the upper hand. "You can one, agree to talk to me. Or two, you can find out what I know through the various torture methods I know you are more than happy to use against me, then kill me. You'll bury my body nice and deep so no one ever finds me, but there is one thing you wouldn't have known. I already had enough information to write a neat little three-page article on the covert genetics lab, known as Project Manticore, and it is locked away in a safe place. You also wouldn't have known that I left a message with my secretary that if anything is to happen to me, that article is supposed to run in not only my magazine, but the magazines of every major news magazine in the country."
Lydecker stared at Logan unwaveringly. "Do you have any idea what you'd do if you published some half-assed article? Do you have any idea how many lives you endanger, if not kill?"
"That is why I am here. I want to get your side of the story, with that make a informed and well rounded article."
"Do you think that just because it is informed, it will put the people you are speaking of in any less danger? These prototypes are top secret, no one outside of the highest military clearance knows of them. Even the slightest publicity of there existence will destroy them." Lydecker said impatiently.
"Or," Logan interjected. "It could make them ten times better. I assume they are working for the government, and that they are basically paid assassins. So what if the public was to know of them, do you think that would change the way they go to work everyday? It wouldn't mean more or less to them at all."
"It isn't the everyday public I care about. It is the hundreds of foreign countries that would love to get a hold of the prototypes genetic code, those who would know what to expect, those that would kill a prototype just because they could. Any exposure to them is like signing their death warrant." Lydecker lowered the gun, and releasing the hammer, it disappeared behind his jacket again.
"Well, let's face it. It is only a matter of time before this little place of yours is exposed. Whoever it was I saw, whether it was a prototype at all, blew this whole thing open. If I don't publish it, someone else will, and they wont be nearly as nice as I will."
Lydecker stood, placing his hands on the table. "Do you think you can threaten me? Do you think you can threaten this project?"
"Do you think you can keep this under wraps for much longer?" Logan shot back.
Lydecker sat back in his chair. "Mr. Cale, I am trying to appeal to you here. Will you please just walk away from this and leave it alone. It would be best for all parties involved."
"You know I can't do that."
Logan watched Lydecker for that moment where the shields dropped and he ran a hand over his face. Lydecker rose silently and walked out of the room, shutting the door quickly behind him.
Lydecker walked around the corner and into another room where a small group of people sat watching the room where Logan sat on a closed circuit television. "We have to decide what to do."
All eyes turned from the TV to Lydecker. "What choice do we have? If we kill him, as was the original plan, we'll be exposed without our side of the story. If we let him in, we can at least censor the hell out of everything he rights so it sounds as good as humanly possible." A small blonde woman with a pixie cap of platinum hair spoke authoritatively.
"Plus," added a black man. "He does have a point. We can't keep this under wraps forever. Maybe we should go public on our own; it'll certainly look better than being exposed with out our consent. We can control the madness that this will create if we have a hand in it."
Lydecker nodded, glancing at the screen where Logan still sat bound, looking around the room. "Are we in agreement?" One by one, each man and woman in the room nodded. "Ok, well someone untie him and send him into my office, I'll make it so there is no possible way for this to get out of control."

Logan was led, none to gently, by a uniformed soldier, into Lydecker's office a few minuets later. Before the door even shut behind him, Lydecker was speaking. "Everything you write will be censored. Basically, it comes down to the first amendment doesn't apply here. You will stay out of the way. If you are to get into my kids way, if they don't kill you themselves, I will. If you even try and fuck with us, you wont know what hit you. And if you are willing to risk your life to get a Nobel Prize or whatever you get for being a journalist, think first. Are you really willing to risk your life, your magazine, and your family? Your sister and her husband? Your niece?" Logan clenched his jaw to keep himself from saying anything he would regret. Bringing up his sister's family wasn't the smartest thing to do. "Because trust me, the committee will not hesitate to make you cease to exist Manticore." Lydecker finished.
Logan nodded. "Fine, but I get unrestricted access to this base, to the prototypes, and access to those who trained them." He demanded in a steel voice.
Lydecker pushed a paper forward to the edge of the desk. "Sign that. Its just your basic contract stating what I have already mentioned."
Logan stepped forward, and after quickly reading the fine print, he signed his name along the line.
Lydecker stood, looking none to happy. "Well, may I be the first to welcome you to Project Manticore."