AN: I'm sorry it has taken me so long to finish this chapter. I was
distracted by Logan's cousin Tony. He absconded with my muse and it only
returned recently.
As always I need to thank my wonderful betas, Kyre and Alaidh, whos name I regularly miss spell.
Ideas are weird things. You never know when one is perfectly yours or not. So many writers have written so many things it is impossible to acknowledge them all.
If I have used a similar idea or taken one whole cloth from anyone it was not my intention.
Thanks to all the writers that ever wrote a book or a story I am indebted to you.
Dancing in the Moonlight Chapter 9
~~~
Logan rocked back and forth, talking incessantly. He was bathed in a cold sweat. He looked around wildly and picked at the air, reaching for things only he could see. Occasionally he got up and tried to walk, but the shackle around his ankle held him in place. "My name is Logan Cale... My name is Logan Cale... Logan Cale... Max? Max are you here? Oh God... oh God... help me, someone... Dad? Dad... anybody... don't go... Please don't go.
He kept seeing her. She smiled and walked away. As she left she whispered something. Logan strained to hear. "Wait, Max ... Max!" He reached out his hand to her, but the only thing left was a pair of dark brown eyes that drifted away.
He stood on the precipice again. He was cold. He was always cold. The voice came back to him. ~Jump. It would be so easy. No one would miss you. She doesn't miss you. Why would she? You can't compete with her. Isn't that why she let you go? Isn't that why she hasn't come for you?~
"No, no, no, no, no! It's not true! It's not true! Max! Max!" Logan lay on the floor, shaking uncontrollably. He curled into a fetal position and began to moan. He quickly sat up fighting unseen enemies, and began futilely pulling on the shackle that bound his ankle to the ground. His left hand was almost useless; his first three fingers jutted at odd angles. He got to his feet and tried to run, but fell heavily to the ground. He sat up and began rocking again.
White watched the writhing Logan on the monitor and smiled. He clapped and rubbed his hands together. "This seems to be going well. What did you give him?" he asked, turning to the other man in the room.
Kyle Gentry frowned as he looked at the monitor. "I gave him a combination of a hallucinogenic, an anti-psychotic, and pure amphetamine. He's been awake for ninety-eight hours now. I don't know how much longer he can take this. It would be counter-productive to kill him at this point, don't you think? You're so close to your goal."
"True," White responded thoughtfully. He pressed a button on the console in front of him. "Bring me a readout on the prisoner now!" he barked.
A moment later, a technician knocked on the door. "Sir, the readouts you requested," he said, handing White several sheets of paper. The tech scrambled for the door, glad to get out of White's presence.
White handed the sheets to Gentry, who perused them carefully. Gentry looked up. "We need to bring him down, and quickly. His heart rate is over two hundred and has been for over twenty-four hours. His heart can't take the stress."
"What will that do to his conditioning? How much time will we lose?"
"None. We'll put him to sleep and control his dreams. It's not hard. You do have tapes of 452's voice, do you not? We can splice the tapes and smooth the conversation to get what we want. Then he just listens while he's asleep."
White smiled. It was reptilian, like the smile of a crocodile before it strikes. "Very good," was all he said as he looked thoughtfully at Logan.
~~~ Twenty-Four Hours Later ~~~
Logan was comfortable. It was an odd sensation; the only things he'd felt for so long were pain and cold. He looked around but couldn't see much. The room was dim, with only a pale light coming from... where? He tried to sit but found himself enveloped in soothing warmth so he drifted back to sleep.
He awakened with a start. There was a person singing somewhere in the dimly lit room. He looked around to see who it could be, but he saw nothing. Sitting up was easy; nothing was pulling him back into the warmth. Logan looked around one more time then stood. The music was persistent, drawing him toward it. When he got to the source, he found a blonde woman singing to a tow-headed boy not more than two.
"Mom?"
~You are my sunshine, my only sunshine. You make me happy when skies are gray.~ She sang to the child, who threw himself into his mother's arms. They both laughed as Olivia Cale hugged her son tightly. She began singing again. ~You are my sunshine, my only sunshine.~
"Mom, can you hear me? It's me, Logan. Mom?" the longing was apparent in Logan's voice as he spoke.
The room got dimmer and Logan looked around to see what happened. When he looked back, the tableau changed. Olivia Cale stood in the kitchen, a touch of flour on her nose. A five-year-old Logan came racing into the room as fast as he could. "Mom! What ya doing?"
"I'm making cookies. Do you want to help me?"
"Sure!" a delighted Logan said. "Mom," he said, turning serious, "I'll always help you."
"I know, sweetheart," replied his mom.
"I remember that day. Dad came home and we gave him the cookies, they were chocolate chip. Dad picked me up and hugged me. I remember, Mom, I remember." Logan stretched out his arm, then lowered it. He raised his left hand and looked at it. It was deformed the fingers were all broken. He looked around and the tableau dissolved before his eyes. "This isn't right. This isn't right. He began to feel the pain and cold surrounding him. Suddenly the warmth overtook him, and he fell into a deep sleep.
"I thought you said you could break him," White said as he paced the room.
"Patience, brother White. I didn't say I could do it in a day. I can bring him into a fugue state, but controlling memories is a tricky thing. He's endured almost five months of physical and mental conditioning and he still has a sense of himself. He is very strong-willed. This may take a few days," Gentry said. Sotto voce, he added, "You are a very complicated man Logan Cale. This may take longer than I thought."
Logan drifted in the warmth. He wasn't quite awake, but every time he tried to wake up, something pushed him back into the warmth, so he drifted.
Logan awakened more slowly this time. He heard a conversation coming from somewhere in the room. Again, he sat up and rose from the bed, making his way toward the voices. He stopped and looked into a hospital room. Olivia Cale sat on a hospital bed wan and frail. She looked at the teenaged boy standing at her bedside. He was tall and thin, tears threatening to spill down his cheeks.
"You didn't help me. You promised you would take care of me. I'm going to die and it's all because of you." She turned and looked at Logan, who stared at the scene, horror on his face. "You are nothing to me; you're nobody. Nobody, nobody, nobody, nobody... " The word echoed as the scene faded.
Logan sunk to his knees. "No, Mom, please," he pleaded to the empty space. "I tried. I tried so hard. I tried." The tears that had threatened to fall, now spilled down his cheeks freely. He lay on the floor, the cold overtaking him again; he was quickly sucked into the warm void.
"Why did you pull back? You had him," White pounded his fist on the console in frustration. He turned to look at Logan through an observation window. On the hospital bed, Logan appeared small, his emaciated frame engulfed in the white of the sheets. There were electrodes covering his head, monitors on his chest and a shackle on his left ankle. An IV dripped a milky fluid into a vein in his right arm.
"I implanted the first suggestion. I'm letting it absorb into his psyche. I'll send him out again soon. Overload him and he will rebel," Gentry said, "like he did at first. He's extraordinary; I've never seen anyone like him before. When you're done with him, I would like to have him to study. He'll make a wonderful study subject into how stress affects the human mind."
"I don't care what you do afterward. I want him broken. You have forty- eight hours. Do you understand?" White hissed. He took one more look at Logan and left the room.
"Perfectly," replied Gentry, with more calm than he felt. He glanced at Logan through the window then turned back to the console and began to work.
Logan stood in the same room. It was totally quiet. He began to walk slowly toward a bit of light. He stopped and another tableau appeared. He watched as a boy of ten stood at his father's desk. "Logan, what's this?"
"It's my report card, Dad."
"I know it's your report card," James Cale replied witheringly, " I mean what is this grade?"
"It's a B, Dad. I'm sorry," ten-year-old Logan replied with trepidation.
"Sorry doesn't cut it. You need to live up to your responsibility as a Cale. B is an unacceptable grade. You are grounded for the next six weeks. Remember, if you're not a Cale, you're nobody. Do you understand?" Nobody!"
Logan recoiled at the scene. Quickly turning away he tried to run, but another tableau opened before him. He watched mesmerized by the scene before him. James Cale walked down the stairs to the waiting car followed by a sixteen-year-old Logan.
"Dad," he implored, "how long are you going to be gone?"
"I don't know," James Cale replied coldly. "I don't even want to look at you right now. You let your mother die. You are nothing to me. A nobody." James Cale got in the car and drove away and the scene dissolved.
"No, no, no, no, no, it wasn't that way! It wasn't that way!" Logan tried to run but tripped because his left leg refused to move. "What is happening to me? God, what is happening?"
Suddenly he heard music. It was a waltz. Not a sad waltz, but a wild raucous waltz. People in bright evening clothes swirled around him, disorienting him. Logan scrambled to his feet. He saw his parents dancing and he tried to go to them. "Mom, Dad," he called, but they looked at him, laughed and danced away. ~You're a nobody,~ he heard.
He looked down at himself and saw that he was dressed in filthy gray scrubs. He looked up and the dancers were all laughing at him. Uncle Jonas came out of the crowd. "You've never been able to do anything right, have you? You can't even dress properly for a party in your honor. You are truly a nobody." Then Jonas drifted back into the wild dance. Logan caught a glimpse of him dancing with Margo, who laughed and pointed.
The crowd parted again and Max walked toward Logan. She was dressed in the red dress she had worn at Bennett's wedding. She held out her hands. "Dance with me," she said. Wordlessly she took Logan's hands in her own and began to dance with him.
"Max, are you real?" Logan asked.
"As real as you need."
"Have you come to take me home?"
Max threw back her head and laughed, a laugh as wild as the waltz around them. "Take you home? Why would I want a nobody like you? I've been so happy since you disappeared. You were a fool to think I could ever care for a nobody like you. You are nothing to me." She swirled away and disappeared into the crowd.
"Max, no, please! It's not true. It's not true." Logan began to push through the crowd and suddenly he was on the edge of the precipice. The wind blew cold through to his bones. He looked over the edge into the void. It was so inviting; he could just step off. ~Go no one will miss you it won't hurt anymore. Just jump.~
Logan stepped off the edge, only to have a strong hand catch him. He looked up and saw that it was Max, his Max. She pulled him from the brink. "I love you Logan. Never forget that. I will always find you." She kissed him hard then she was gone. Logan drifted.
~~~Twenty Four Hours Later ~~~
"Get up, you piece of shit! How dare you sleep without permission?" Logan was dragged unceremoniously from the floor and forced to stand at attention, eyes front, shoulders back.
White stood before him, looking at what he had done. Logan was bald, emaciated; his clothing hung loosely on his frame. White smiled. "What is your name?" he asked.
Logan said nothing and stared ahead.
White looked irritated and said, "You have my permission to speak."
Logan thought for a few minutes. He licked his lips and whispered hoarsely. "My name is Logan Cale."
White's face reddened in fury. He backhanded Logan knocking him to the ground. He began to punch and kick Logan. "Your nobody do you understand that? Nobody!" He spat at Logan, who curled into a fetal position trying to protect himself. "You are nobody." White turned and left the room.
Logan lay on the floor for a long time. He finally sat up and looked around. He was still shackled to the floor, but the cuff on his ankle was loose. He reached down to touch the cuff. He could almost push it off his ankle. Working the cuff with his good hand and moving his foot, he managed to slip the cuff off. It frightened him; he had been bound so long that he didn't know what to do. ~It's a trap. You know it is. Maybe not; I've got to try.~ The argument went on in his head for many minutes.
Logan stood and tottered slowly to the door. He was very weak and he knew he couldn't make a run for it. He would try to sneak out. Slowly opening the door a crack, he looked out. Seeing no one, he slipped out the door. Holding his hand along the wall, he crept slowly down the dim hall. A corner appeared and he turned right. Walking a few feet, he heard voices. His heart pounded and he held his breath. He flattened himself against the wall, then quickly turned the other way, going back the way he came as fast as he could. His breathing labored and his heart raced as he moved as silently as he could. He kept going being as careful as possible. At the end of the hall there was a door. Opening it, he looked into a spring night. ~How long have I been here?~ He thought.
He moved stealthily along the outside wall. Hope grew with every step. He carefully made his way toward a tree by the outer wall. Staying in the shadows, Logan was nearly to the tree when the spotlight caught him. He stopped immediately and turned toward the light.
White came out of the shadows and walked toward Logan swinging a flexible bamboo cane. Grinning in a feral manner he said, "Did you think it would be that easy?"
Logan slumped and said nothing. Two of White's people came and handcuffed his hands behind his back. He was shoved and half dragged back into the building. He was pushed past the door of his cell and into another room. He remembered this room. He looked at the hospital bed as White's people removed the cuffs. "Lie down," came the sharp command. Logan complied and his hands were handcuffed above his head. His feet were pulled through the rails at the end of the bed and secured.
White smiled amiably. "You were a cripple once. I think maybe we should revisit that. If you can avoid screaming, I'll let you go. Not a bad deal, don't you think?"
Logan said through gritted teeth, "You're going to do what you're going to do. I have no control. So get it over with."
"You're so right. You've never had any control, nobody. Goodbye. It's been a lot of fun." White raised his arm and swung the cane with all his strength across the sole of Logan's left foot.
Logan arched his back and screamed. He never felt the second blow as he fell into the abyss.
~~~ Sometime later ~~~
He awakened in a comfortable bed. He looked around the dim room. A door opened, and a man walked in. Logan scrambled to get out of bed. He couldn't walk, so he crawled. He got on his knees and waited. The man came to him and said, "What is your name?"
Logan thought for a long time before he said, " I don't have a name. I'm nobody.
As always I need to thank my wonderful betas, Kyre and Alaidh, whos name I regularly miss spell.
Ideas are weird things. You never know when one is perfectly yours or not. So many writers have written so many things it is impossible to acknowledge them all.
If I have used a similar idea or taken one whole cloth from anyone it was not my intention.
Thanks to all the writers that ever wrote a book or a story I am indebted to you.
Dancing in the Moonlight Chapter 9
~~~
Logan rocked back and forth, talking incessantly. He was bathed in a cold sweat. He looked around wildly and picked at the air, reaching for things only he could see. Occasionally he got up and tried to walk, but the shackle around his ankle held him in place. "My name is Logan Cale... My name is Logan Cale... Logan Cale... Max? Max are you here? Oh God... oh God... help me, someone... Dad? Dad... anybody... don't go... Please don't go.
He kept seeing her. She smiled and walked away. As she left she whispered something. Logan strained to hear. "Wait, Max ... Max!" He reached out his hand to her, but the only thing left was a pair of dark brown eyes that drifted away.
He stood on the precipice again. He was cold. He was always cold. The voice came back to him. ~Jump. It would be so easy. No one would miss you. She doesn't miss you. Why would she? You can't compete with her. Isn't that why she let you go? Isn't that why she hasn't come for you?~
"No, no, no, no, no! It's not true! It's not true! Max! Max!" Logan lay on the floor, shaking uncontrollably. He curled into a fetal position and began to moan. He quickly sat up fighting unseen enemies, and began futilely pulling on the shackle that bound his ankle to the ground. His left hand was almost useless; his first three fingers jutted at odd angles. He got to his feet and tried to run, but fell heavily to the ground. He sat up and began rocking again.
White watched the writhing Logan on the monitor and smiled. He clapped and rubbed his hands together. "This seems to be going well. What did you give him?" he asked, turning to the other man in the room.
Kyle Gentry frowned as he looked at the monitor. "I gave him a combination of a hallucinogenic, an anti-psychotic, and pure amphetamine. He's been awake for ninety-eight hours now. I don't know how much longer he can take this. It would be counter-productive to kill him at this point, don't you think? You're so close to your goal."
"True," White responded thoughtfully. He pressed a button on the console in front of him. "Bring me a readout on the prisoner now!" he barked.
A moment later, a technician knocked on the door. "Sir, the readouts you requested," he said, handing White several sheets of paper. The tech scrambled for the door, glad to get out of White's presence.
White handed the sheets to Gentry, who perused them carefully. Gentry looked up. "We need to bring him down, and quickly. His heart rate is over two hundred and has been for over twenty-four hours. His heart can't take the stress."
"What will that do to his conditioning? How much time will we lose?"
"None. We'll put him to sleep and control his dreams. It's not hard. You do have tapes of 452's voice, do you not? We can splice the tapes and smooth the conversation to get what we want. Then he just listens while he's asleep."
White smiled. It was reptilian, like the smile of a crocodile before it strikes. "Very good," was all he said as he looked thoughtfully at Logan.
~~~ Twenty-Four Hours Later ~~~
Logan was comfortable. It was an odd sensation; the only things he'd felt for so long were pain and cold. He looked around but couldn't see much. The room was dim, with only a pale light coming from... where? He tried to sit but found himself enveloped in soothing warmth so he drifted back to sleep.
He awakened with a start. There was a person singing somewhere in the dimly lit room. He looked around to see who it could be, but he saw nothing. Sitting up was easy; nothing was pulling him back into the warmth. Logan looked around one more time then stood. The music was persistent, drawing him toward it. When he got to the source, he found a blonde woman singing to a tow-headed boy not more than two.
"Mom?"
~You are my sunshine, my only sunshine. You make me happy when skies are gray.~ She sang to the child, who threw himself into his mother's arms. They both laughed as Olivia Cale hugged her son tightly. She began singing again. ~You are my sunshine, my only sunshine.~
"Mom, can you hear me? It's me, Logan. Mom?" the longing was apparent in Logan's voice as he spoke.
The room got dimmer and Logan looked around to see what happened. When he looked back, the tableau changed. Olivia Cale stood in the kitchen, a touch of flour on her nose. A five-year-old Logan came racing into the room as fast as he could. "Mom! What ya doing?"
"I'm making cookies. Do you want to help me?"
"Sure!" a delighted Logan said. "Mom," he said, turning serious, "I'll always help you."
"I know, sweetheart," replied his mom.
"I remember that day. Dad came home and we gave him the cookies, they were chocolate chip. Dad picked me up and hugged me. I remember, Mom, I remember." Logan stretched out his arm, then lowered it. He raised his left hand and looked at it. It was deformed the fingers were all broken. He looked around and the tableau dissolved before his eyes. "This isn't right. This isn't right. He began to feel the pain and cold surrounding him. Suddenly the warmth overtook him, and he fell into a deep sleep.
"I thought you said you could break him," White said as he paced the room.
"Patience, brother White. I didn't say I could do it in a day. I can bring him into a fugue state, but controlling memories is a tricky thing. He's endured almost five months of physical and mental conditioning and he still has a sense of himself. He is very strong-willed. This may take a few days," Gentry said. Sotto voce, he added, "You are a very complicated man Logan Cale. This may take longer than I thought."
Logan drifted in the warmth. He wasn't quite awake, but every time he tried to wake up, something pushed him back into the warmth, so he drifted.
Logan awakened more slowly this time. He heard a conversation coming from somewhere in the room. Again, he sat up and rose from the bed, making his way toward the voices. He stopped and looked into a hospital room. Olivia Cale sat on a hospital bed wan and frail. She looked at the teenaged boy standing at her bedside. He was tall and thin, tears threatening to spill down his cheeks.
"You didn't help me. You promised you would take care of me. I'm going to die and it's all because of you." She turned and looked at Logan, who stared at the scene, horror on his face. "You are nothing to me; you're nobody. Nobody, nobody, nobody, nobody... " The word echoed as the scene faded.
Logan sunk to his knees. "No, Mom, please," he pleaded to the empty space. "I tried. I tried so hard. I tried." The tears that had threatened to fall, now spilled down his cheeks freely. He lay on the floor, the cold overtaking him again; he was quickly sucked into the warm void.
"Why did you pull back? You had him," White pounded his fist on the console in frustration. He turned to look at Logan through an observation window. On the hospital bed, Logan appeared small, his emaciated frame engulfed in the white of the sheets. There were electrodes covering his head, monitors on his chest and a shackle on his left ankle. An IV dripped a milky fluid into a vein in his right arm.
"I implanted the first suggestion. I'm letting it absorb into his psyche. I'll send him out again soon. Overload him and he will rebel," Gentry said, "like he did at first. He's extraordinary; I've never seen anyone like him before. When you're done with him, I would like to have him to study. He'll make a wonderful study subject into how stress affects the human mind."
"I don't care what you do afterward. I want him broken. You have forty- eight hours. Do you understand?" White hissed. He took one more look at Logan and left the room.
"Perfectly," replied Gentry, with more calm than he felt. He glanced at Logan through the window then turned back to the console and began to work.
Logan stood in the same room. It was totally quiet. He began to walk slowly toward a bit of light. He stopped and another tableau appeared. He watched as a boy of ten stood at his father's desk. "Logan, what's this?"
"It's my report card, Dad."
"I know it's your report card," James Cale replied witheringly, " I mean what is this grade?"
"It's a B, Dad. I'm sorry," ten-year-old Logan replied with trepidation.
"Sorry doesn't cut it. You need to live up to your responsibility as a Cale. B is an unacceptable grade. You are grounded for the next six weeks. Remember, if you're not a Cale, you're nobody. Do you understand?" Nobody!"
Logan recoiled at the scene. Quickly turning away he tried to run, but another tableau opened before him. He watched mesmerized by the scene before him. James Cale walked down the stairs to the waiting car followed by a sixteen-year-old Logan.
"Dad," he implored, "how long are you going to be gone?"
"I don't know," James Cale replied coldly. "I don't even want to look at you right now. You let your mother die. You are nothing to me. A nobody." James Cale got in the car and drove away and the scene dissolved.
"No, no, no, no, no, it wasn't that way! It wasn't that way!" Logan tried to run but tripped because his left leg refused to move. "What is happening to me? God, what is happening?"
Suddenly he heard music. It was a waltz. Not a sad waltz, but a wild raucous waltz. People in bright evening clothes swirled around him, disorienting him. Logan scrambled to his feet. He saw his parents dancing and he tried to go to them. "Mom, Dad," he called, but they looked at him, laughed and danced away. ~You're a nobody,~ he heard.
He looked down at himself and saw that he was dressed in filthy gray scrubs. He looked up and the dancers were all laughing at him. Uncle Jonas came out of the crowd. "You've never been able to do anything right, have you? You can't even dress properly for a party in your honor. You are truly a nobody." Then Jonas drifted back into the wild dance. Logan caught a glimpse of him dancing with Margo, who laughed and pointed.
The crowd parted again and Max walked toward Logan. She was dressed in the red dress she had worn at Bennett's wedding. She held out her hands. "Dance with me," she said. Wordlessly she took Logan's hands in her own and began to dance with him.
"Max, are you real?" Logan asked.
"As real as you need."
"Have you come to take me home?"
Max threw back her head and laughed, a laugh as wild as the waltz around them. "Take you home? Why would I want a nobody like you? I've been so happy since you disappeared. You were a fool to think I could ever care for a nobody like you. You are nothing to me." She swirled away and disappeared into the crowd.
"Max, no, please! It's not true. It's not true." Logan began to push through the crowd and suddenly he was on the edge of the precipice. The wind blew cold through to his bones. He looked over the edge into the void. It was so inviting; he could just step off. ~Go no one will miss you it won't hurt anymore. Just jump.~
Logan stepped off the edge, only to have a strong hand catch him. He looked up and saw that it was Max, his Max. She pulled him from the brink. "I love you Logan. Never forget that. I will always find you." She kissed him hard then she was gone. Logan drifted.
~~~Twenty Four Hours Later ~~~
"Get up, you piece of shit! How dare you sleep without permission?" Logan was dragged unceremoniously from the floor and forced to stand at attention, eyes front, shoulders back.
White stood before him, looking at what he had done. Logan was bald, emaciated; his clothing hung loosely on his frame. White smiled. "What is your name?" he asked.
Logan said nothing and stared ahead.
White looked irritated and said, "You have my permission to speak."
Logan thought for a few minutes. He licked his lips and whispered hoarsely. "My name is Logan Cale."
White's face reddened in fury. He backhanded Logan knocking him to the ground. He began to punch and kick Logan. "Your nobody do you understand that? Nobody!" He spat at Logan, who curled into a fetal position trying to protect himself. "You are nobody." White turned and left the room.
Logan lay on the floor for a long time. He finally sat up and looked around. He was still shackled to the floor, but the cuff on his ankle was loose. He reached down to touch the cuff. He could almost push it off his ankle. Working the cuff with his good hand and moving his foot, he managed to slip the cuff off. It frightened him; he had been bound so long that he didn't know what to do. ~It's a trap. You know it is. Maybe not; I've got to try.~ The argument went on in his head for many minutes.
Logan stood and tottered slowly to the door. He was very weak and he knew he couldn't make a run for it. He would try to sneak out. Slowly opening the door a crack, he looked out. Seeing no one, he slipped out the door. Holding his hand along the wall, he crept slowly down the dim hall. A corner appeared and he turned right. Walking a few feet, he heard voices. His heart pounded and he held his breath. He flattened himself against the wall, then quickly turned the other way, going back the way he came as fast as he could. His breathing labored and his heart raced as he moved as silently as he could. He kept going being as careful as possible. At the end of the hall there was a door. Opening it, he looked into a spring night. ~How long have I been here?~ He thought.
He moved stealthily along the outside wall. Hope grew with every step. He carefully made his way toward a tree by the outer wall. Staying in the shadows, Logan was nearly to the tree when the spotlight caught him. He stopped immediately and turned toward the light.
White came out of the shadows and walked toward Logan swinging a flexible bamboo cane. Grinning in a feral manner he said, "Did you think it would be that easy?"
Logan slumped and said nothing. Two of White's people came and handcuffed his hands behind his back. He was shoved and half dragged back into the building. He was pushed past the door of his cell and into another room. He remembered this room. He looked at the hospital bed as White's people removed the cuffs. "Lie down," came the sharp command. Logan complied and his hands were handcuffed above his head. His feet were pulled through the rails at the end of the bed and secured.
White smiled amiably. "You were a cripple once. I think maybe we should revisit that. If you can avoid screaming, I'll let you go. Not a bad deal, don't you think?"
Logan said through gritted teeth, "You're going to do what you're going to do. I have no control. So get it over with."
"You're so right. You've never had any control, nobody. Goodbye. It's been a lot of fun." White raised his arm and swung the cane with all his strength across the sole of Logan's left foot.
Logan arched his back and screamed. He never felt the second blow as he fell into the abyss.
~~~ Sometime later ~~~
He awakened in a comfortable bed. He looked around the dim room. A door opened, and a man walked in. Logan scrambled to get out of bed. He couldn't walk, so he crawled. He got on his knees and waited. The man came to him and said, "What is your name?"
Logan thought for a long time before he said, " I don't have a name. I'm nobody.