Chapter 15

Jesus.

For the first time in about two years I'm back in the States.I'm back on my home turf, on my native soil, and… I kinda missed it.I sure as hell don't regret leavin' this place, but… sometimes a li'l distance helps you to appreciate what you left behind a li'l bit more.

Yeah, right. It ain't like you had much to leave behind. A dead wife and a dead kid… A fam'ly that wants nothin' t'do with you… Whatever debris was left at the Empharma site.

The memories feelin'… it's the whole reason I walked away in the first place. I was dispossessed in my own damn the life I'd started in NY… well, that didn't turn out to be much of a life after move to London had made sense. It still does.

But will it make sense forever?

I shrug off the are other things on my mind now – far more important things.

The airport I find myself in is probably small and unregulated – nothing more than an airfield and a landing strip and a junky hangar filled with dead-eyed men hauling drugs and art and archaeological stare at me as I walk by, like I'm somethin' from another world… But I coulda so easily ended up like them.I was once a li'l orphan street-kid, pickin' pockets and hustlin' to get by… and if Jean-Luc LeBeau hadn't taken me in, I woulda likely ended up haulin' drugs offa planes for the big cheese in some faceless criminal enterprise. Instead I was brought up in the lap of luxury, whisked off on international crime sprees that involved fine clothes, good food, beautiful women, and so much money you couldn't even imagine it in your wildest only mistake I made was to fall in love with the daughter of my adopted father's rival.

I head to the parking lot and steal one of the worker's 't got time t'be feelin' guilty about with what could be at stake.

I punch the coordinates of Anna's last known location into my phone's sat nav app, and, within a few moments, I'm speeding off south.

-oOo-

Several hours and a couple of pitstops later, and I'm at my destination.

Night's already on the horizon; a gale's picked up; and it's started to , all in all, it's shaping up to be a shitty night.I pull the hood up on my jacket and hope this isn't a bad omen.

Before I left London, while I'd been waiting for the flight that would smuggle me out, I'd researched this location old industrial park that had been abandoned for the past twenty odd land had recently been purchased to build some luxury accommodation, and the entire site was scheduled for demolition a week from now.I guess Logan figures he'll let a bulldozer come and destroy any trace that he was ever .

I take a quick look at my 's still quiet, which means that Wisdom still ain't cottoned onto the fact that I've skipped ' Wisdom, that ain't gonna last for much longer, and when he finds out what I've done, he's gonna be pissed. I'm only sorry I ain't gonna be there to see his reaction.I send Jake a quick, encrypted message, just to let him know I'm here, and then pocket my phone again.

Jake and I are standin' out on the tarmac as the plane gets its top up of fuel.

It's all been so smooth – too smooth, almost, that I'm half expectin' Wisdom to come gunnin' down the airstrip any moment now.

"Any last requests?" Jake asks sarcastically.

"Yeah, as a matter of fact," I reply. "I ain't gonna expect ya t'hold Wisdom off for long, but while he's distracted, there's somethin' you can do."

He gives me a look, like he knows he ain't gonna like this.

"Okay. What?"

"You and Katherine. Hack into MI13's servers. Search for anythin' they have that's related to Weapon X. Send me what you find."

He considers me a moment.

"You think Wisdom's starting up his own Weapon X," he says. "Don't you."

I nod.

"Yeah," I say. "I do."

The site's surrounded by a perimeter fence that's been broken through many times before, but only recently seems to have been patched up – probably at the request of the property developers.I vault it without much trouble, and once I get on the other side, it starts to piss it down.

Merde.

Note: And that is as far as I got when I stopped writing in 2019!

Don't worry - I AM planning to finish this story now. I'm currently also working on another abandoned fic, which is close to being finished. I'm going to concentrate on finishing that fic first, before I head back to tackling this one. During Christmas and New Year's I worked a bit on this fic, writing about 50 pages... but from the end of the fic backwards. Which means that there is definitely an end in sight!

I don't know when I'm going to get round to finishing this, but it IS my plan to get there sooner rather than later.

Thank you everyone for your patience, and for following this story and AU after so many years. It is truly a special thing to know that it is so loved. And thank you to annalebeau for prompting me to post this, and for bringing me back to writing this fic again.

In the meantime... love you all, and keep the Romy ship sailing! xxx