Second to last chapter!!! Most of it is movie dialogue but I altered it a little to fit my version of the story! just so you guys are fore-warned.

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

Chapter 17: The Payment.

"Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage."Lao Tzu

A week passed without anymore incidents. I only left my cell to take quick walks, I refused to be studied. When I was put into the room with the double sided glass, I sat in the farthest corner and did not speak or move until Stryker grew so frustrated with me he'd have Victor return me to my room.

Sadly, I'd caught a few glimpses of Emma, who'd been confined to a cage like a wild animal. I would pause at the wall of windows that looked out at the "kennel" as the guards called it and press my hand to the glass, wishing there was more I could do for her. I could never get her attention when I stood there, but I think she knew, somehow, that I was there.

I was pretty sure another week passed, but I hadn't been out of my room much. And I heard some of the guards whispering and looking worried, casting suspicious glances at me.

There was a sudden shift in the atmosphere around me. Victor snapped more than usual, Stryker grew quiet and pensive, ever busy with his new project; something he called Weapon 11. Meanwhile, I caught up on sleep and returned to my home in Canmore every night in my dreams. It was one of the few things they couldn't take from me.

And then it happened.

A guard came in to wake me in the middle of the night, telling me that Stryker needed me. I swallowed hard and stepped out of the room. This was it. I followed the guard down to one of the entrances and took my place in the shadows, so he wouldn't see me right away and I waited. For a year, a day, a century, I couldn't be sure. It all blurred together until Stryker glanced at the door and then at Victor who hid.

A few days earlier, Stryker sat me down to tell me how it was going to go. I didn't look him in the eye once and felt myself hating him more and more with every passing moment.

"You are not to speak until I speak to you," Stryker instructed in a chillingly calm voice. "Not a word, a sound. And the only thing you are to say is that we gave you hydrochlorothiazide and that it makes it look like you've flat-lined."

How did I get here? I asked myself. How did it come to this?

"Kayla?" Stryker's voice was loud in my ear. "Are you listening?"

I glanced up, serenely calm. "Yes, I heard you. But I don't see anything to gain in all this…."

"This is the last thing I'll ask of you." He smiles at me. "If you do it, then I will let your sister go free and you two can return to that little town of yours and you'll never hear from me again."

"I agreed to one of your deals before and look where it's gotten me," I retorted.

Stryker leaned so close I could see the bags under his eyes, the strain for restrain. He lifted his hand in one smooth motion and cupped my chin so I had to look him in the eye. "You chose this, Kayla. You could have walked away from everything and you chose this."

I had never been so certain of anything in my life until that moment and I knew, in the deep recesses of my mind and soul that I wouldn't get out of this alive. "I know I chose this," I whispered. "And they say you learn from your mistakes. But I guess not."

I closed my eyes and felt him, rather than saw, come in. It was easier. I held my breath and blocked everything else out until I heard him drop to his knees and whisper: "Who are you?"

It's me! I wanted to scream. I'm here, I'm fine! But I simply opened my eyes and kept my mouth shut, all the while wanting to throw my arms around him, feel his warm strength flow through his arms, smell his smell again and be anywhere but here.

"She's real, old friend," Stryker assured Logan. "Did you really think we'd just let you walk away? You're a dangerous man. We like to keep an eye on dangerous men." He shot me a hard look. "Tell him about the day you died."

I licked my lips and took a deep breath before I repeat like it's a lesson well learned: "They gave me a shot of hydrochlorothiazide. It reduces the heart rate so low it appears you flat-lined."

I felt as though someone had slashed me through the heart when Logan heard the news. A part of me wanted to run to him and tell him how it really happened, how Victor had threatened him and Emma and how I had no choice. What was I supposed to do? He needed to know that I loved him with every bit of my heart that didn't already belong to Emma but I was bound to my silence. I only let my gaze fall to the floor when I wouldn't hold his wounded gaze anymore.

"Oh, don't be angry with her," Stryker chuckled darkly. "She's a credit to your species. Did you know that her sister has diamond hard skin?" He wondered conversationally. "Kayla's mutation is tactile hypnosis. She can influence people as long as she touches them. Quite a useful took in a seduction…"

No…no…the bastard didn't. no, no, no. It was done. All of it was done. The omnipotent grin on Stryker's face is blinding in its triumph. "It was never real, my friend."

Logan bowed his head at that and I nearly screamed. I could see the gears working in Logan's head, the anger, palpable from twenty miles away, clouding his mind and spreading through his veins like a disease. "It was real for me." He growled.

I reached forward to put my hand on Logan's shoulder, to calm him, to tell him "No… It isn't like that… I only love you, you know that…don't let this man take that from you. It's yours." but Stryker saw me and opened his lab coat to reveal the gun stocked with the adamantium bullets, I stopped short, my breath caught in my throat.

"I told you, that if you went down this road you wouldn't like what you found." Stryker hopped off the empty operating table he'd been perched on and walked away.

I couldn't say anything at all. Stryker had taken all my words with him all I was left with were tears and hurt and a heart that on the edge of failing.

"You know that story you told me?" Logan asked at last, his voice ragged with fury and betrayal, cutting me just as effectively as a knife would. "About the man who gets flowers for the moon?"

I nodded as the tears beaded on my eyelashes.

"I had it backwards. I thought you were the moon and I was your wolverine. But you're the trickster, aren't you?" I flinched as though he'd hit me. But it was true. True to my name, I supposed. Fox was always the trickster in the stories. Inside, I thought my heart would explode but I'd live through the pain because that was the torture I deserved.

All the while, Logan's eyes never left mine. "I'm just the fool who got played. And worst part is," Logan growled to himself. "I should have known better. But I ignored my instincts. I ignored what I really am. But that won't ever happen again." He stood, shot me one last baleful look as he passed and was gone.

It was all I could do to not fall to my knees and scream, to follow after him and beg him to listen. But Emma…. "Colonel?" I rasped when I found my voice.

"Not now, Kayla," he waved me off like an inquiring five year old.

"I've done everything you asked!" I growled. "What about my sister? You said if I helped you, you'd let her go…"

"Kayla," he turned around, a sad smile on his face. "It's not as simple as that. Her mutation is quite unique. Quite beautiful. We just need some more time to analyze it-"

I was about to insist that he follow through on the deal when Victor appeared. "You let him go?!"

Stryker waved him off as well. "Victor, please-"

"You can't let him go!" Victor growled.

Stryker shook his head. "You can't beat him."

"Give me the adamantium!"

"The test came back-"

"We had a deal!"

"You'd never survive the operation," Stryker told him quietly.

"I can take anything he can…"

"No you can't!" Stryker seemed on the edge of reason and then calmed down. "You're my favorite soldier, Victor. Be patient. Your time will come."

"He's using us," Victor and Stryker both looked back at me as I ground my teeth.

"No…" Victor whispered.

I started to run towards the prison but Victor grabbed me by the throat before I could get five steps in. He lifted me up by the throat, his face twisted. "How about this time, you die for real?"

I gripped his wrist, focusing all my energy into this command; "Let me go…" I rasped. "Please…Let me go…"

Victor smiled. "Your little mind games don't work on me!" he squeezed and I screamed.

Then suddenly, I heard Logan roaring Victor's name and I landed in a heap when he dropped me.

In a blur, Logan hit Victor sending them both crashing through a row of windows. I curled up on my side to avoid the spraying glass and when I sat up again, they had vanished. I ran toward the stairs, not sparing Stryker another thought. When I reached the next level down, the kennel level, I saw Logan standing there looking at his brother.

"Logan?" I breathed softly, anticipating an angry growl or reprove.

He glanced up, eyes tight with mistrust and that crazy fury I'd never seen before.

"Please…"I whispered everything coming out in a rush. "I'm sorry. For everything. It was real for me too!" When I took a step closer, he didn't take one away from me. "I didn't trick you into loving me…but…" I swallowed the tears back. "They have my sister… they have Emma."

Logan suddenly snapped back to himself again. And I was home. "Where?" Was all he asked.

"This way," I led him to the entrance to the kennels, pausing at the lock until he slices the control panel into scrap metal. As soon as we go through the door, the mutants in the cages stop their pacing to look at us. Their faces were blank, the hope nearly diminished in them as they shuffled back and forth across their floors. And then I saw her bright hair reflecting the light. Emma.

I started to ask Logan how we're going to possibly get them out and then he solved that problem too, slashing the thick padlocks until he'd run out of locks to destroy. He stood at the end of the aisle looking back at Emma's slowly opening door. "Half-Pint?" he called, stepping closer. "Half- Pint? Is that you?"

Emma ran to him and threw her arms around him. Logan was shocked at first, to be seeing her there, for me to be telling the truth and then he wrapped his arms around her as well, telling her that everything would be all right.

"How did you find me?" Emma wondered.

"Your sister," he pointed to me.

Emma pushed herself away from him to look at me. She didn't say anything else until she had run to me and I had my arms around her as well. "Oh baby…" I whispered. "Baby, baby…."

"I'm sorry!" Emma repeated. "I'm so so so sorry!"

"I know, I know you are." I held her back, running my hands over her cheeks and neck, checking her over. "I know. Everything is going to be all right now."

I looked up, realizing that Logan was watching us. Our eyes met and everything went silent for a moment.

I had no words to say how sorry I was or any way for me to convey it to him, the only thing I could do was meet his eyes with no visible fear. Nothing had changed. I still loved him and I knew that somewhere in him, he loved me too.

I didn't expect what he did next; he held his hand out to me, the smile I fell in love with on his lips. We were going to be okay.

I took the offered hand as if nothing had ever happened and felt the warm rough calluses under my hand and I was home. It didn't matter what happened next. Logan and I were together and that was something that nobody could take away because we'd found each other despite everything else.

We ran toward the nearest door, connected hand to hand until the door opened and we skidded to a stop. Instantly, Logan pulled me behind him as a figure emerged in the pre-dawn light.

"Wade?" Logan called. "Wade? What did he do to you?"

But as the figure stepped closer, there was something incredibly wrong about him. He was a bald and sickly looking as a terminal cancer patient with deep purple bruises swimming under his eyes. He was thin but in decent shape and covered in black surgical lines. But what made me grip Logan's arm with terror was the man's mouth. He didn't have one, or if he did, it had been sewn together.

"So Stryker finally found a way to keep you quiet, huh Wade?" Logan called but the man standing before made no sign that he noticed or cared that Logan stood before him. The only thing he did was loudly crack his neck and twin swords slid from his knuckles.

"Shit." Logan cursed under his breath. "Kayla, get the kids out of here…" He murmured to me.

"No," It was stupid of me to argue but I didn't want to lose sight of him again. "No, I'm with you-"

"Go!" he hissed as Emma tugged on my arm again.

"Come on," I urged her and grabbed the nearest kid. We ran back to the kennels looking for another way out only to be halted by a rain of bullets. We ducked into the nearest cage, Emma's skin turning bright and shiny as she covered me from every bullet. Every bullet but one.

At first I didn't even know it had happened. Then the slight buzzing in my side began to bite and I pressed a hand to it. But when I pulled it back, hot and oozing blood was smeared across my hand.

"I can help," a boy's voice told Emma as a wave of nausea passed over me. I knelt down and pressed my head against the cage wall, willing the pain away.

"Kayla?" Suddenly Emma's face swam before me. "Kayla! Come on! Let's go!" She grabbed my arm and yanked.

"No…." I hissed. "No, I've got to stay here."

"But…" Emma glanced over her shoulder at the others who were waiting on us.

"Go." I gripped her arm and infused her with my gift. "Go, I'll be fine. Get them out of here."

Her eyes went wide when she realized what I'd done. But she didn't have a choice but to follow my orders.

Only one more chapter to go!!!!

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