A/N: I submit this not as my best work (in fact I don't think I quite captured the emotions the way I wanted to), but as my best excuse for not updating Grazia. This story was originally just a dream I wanted Logan to have before he awoke with the gun to his head, but, it didn't really work. Nevertheless, it hung on with it's vicelike grip, and I had to write it. I warn you now that this is not a happy story. You also may not like my portrayal of Logan (see comment about emotions above). It also didn't get as much attention from EditorAlexia as usual, but I'm in a hurry to return to Grazia. It does, however, include a quote from Dante, and a mention of one of my favorite secondary characters: Detective Matt Sung. Anyway, it takes place after Season 1, before Season 2. Please give it a chance, and see where I wanted it to go.
The Choice
It was a conscious decision, though he never would have admitted it. He pushed people away on purpose. He stopped calling his family as often. He dropped friendships. He refused to flirt with the pretty women who smiled at him in cafés and restaurants. All relationships were business relationships. He didn't have any other kind after he became Eyes Only. It was too dangerous.
It worked rather well for a while. His family was easy enough to avoid. They had self-esteem problems, every single one of them, and they assumed he felt he was too good for them. Apparently, it was fine to them that the black sheep didn't want to show up at family functions anymore. Occasionally, a cousin would call or show up. They would talk for a few minutes, but Logan always had a reason to hang up or to return to his work. The people who had been his childhood friends became strangers to him.
As for friendships, relationships, those were even easier to avoid. His Eyes Only informants were scared and businesslike. There wasn't any time for small talk. Matt Sung was a good man, and far less scared than his other contacts. He also had a family. Logan was usually more careful with Detective Sung than he was with the others. They were friendly acquaintances, and nothing more. Sung had a kid, and Logan was well aware of that. He did his best to keep Matt Sung out of harm's way, and it usually worked, with one unfortunate exception.
As for women… the only women he ever met were informants. Most of them had families as well. He was careful to appear aloof with all of them. He only turned on the charm when they hesitated, when he needed them to trust him. They did trust him. In the end, they all trusted him, and he deserved their trust. After all, look what he gave up so that they could be safe.
Something happened, though. He didn't know how it happened, but it did. Maybe it was his injury. Maybe it was Sam Carr asking if he had anyone who could "help him through this." Maybe it was Bling, who was always there. It was possible to hate Bling, and it was possible to be his friend, at times it was possible to do both, but it was never possible to have just a business relationship with the man. Then again, maybe it was Max. Max, who could be completely aggravating and incredibly arousing at the same time without doing a single damn thing, had gotten under his skin. For months, she'd driven him completely crazy, until the only thing left to do was to admit that he was crazy about her. Maybe it was a combination of factors. All Logan knew was, when the time came to make the choice he'd always suspected he'd have to make, it was the hardest thing he'd ever had to do, and it killed him inside.
He should not have messed with Manticore. He admitted it now. Of course, it's easy to admit you shouldn't have bothered the snake after its bitten you, or after it's locked you in a dark cell, as was Logan's current predicament. He could see quite clearly that he'd gone too far. He'd expected too much too fast. Now the cause for which Max had given her life would never end. Max had died for nothing.
He squeezed his eyes shut against the darkness of the room. He didn't know how long he'd been there, but the sensory deprivation was starting to affect him. Even if he'd been allowed to keep his watch, he wouldn't have been able to read it. The only clue he had by which to tell how long he'd been in Manticore custody was the fact that he'd just shaved the morning that he'd been bashed over the head. Now, he had a good days-worth of facial hair. It was an imperfect science, but it was all he had. He figured he'd been unconscious long enough for them to transport him to wherever he was (and his gut told him Manticore) and treat his head wound, which was bandaged and throbbed like a bitch. Still, they hadn't had time to do anything else, really. He was sure he'd been awake for at least eight hours.
They wouldn't make him talk. They couldn't make him talk.
He'd spent the first hour or so exploring his new quarters. It was a small room, six paces by eight paces. The walls were smooth – some kind of tile – as was the floor. Obviously, there were no windows. The door was metal – no window, no hinges, no doorknob. There would be no brilliant escape for him, not that it was very likely in the first place. He had no idea where he was, and had no way to defend himself. As for the rest of the room – there was a toilet in one corner, and the saddest excuse for a mattress Logan had ever met in the other. He really wanted to leave, but, then again, really didn't want to face what was outside.
Maybe, just maybe, this was a good thing. If he was at Manticore, then maybe he could finally get some answers. Maybe he could find out what happened to Max. They wouldn't have just left her out in the forest, would they? They couldn't. She deserved so much more than that…
The idea of Max's body still lying there, rotting away where no one would ever find her and give her the burial she deserved, brought the sting of bile to Logan's throat. He gagged as a sob ripped through him, and he pushed away the thought. He had to push away the thought, push it away and focus on something else, anything else. He wasn't ready. He hadn't been able to fully accept the idea that he was never going to see her again. The thought that her body could just cease to exist was too much. He couldn't take it.
God, he missed her. Almost two months had passed, and he'd barely recovered from the numbness. Sometimes, he wished he never had. The automatic functioning was so much easier than having to deal with his life without her. Then again, the memories had disappeared while he was numb. It was the resulting panic that he had forgotten something about her that had catapulted him out of his dormant state. That was not a good day in the life of Logan Cale, but neither were any of the days that came after. Waking up in a room devoid of any light or sound, and knowing he was in the hands of Max's enemies wasn't exactly making the top of the list either.
He'd been dreaming of her before he woke up. In this dream, they were lying in bed. His arms were around her waist, and her head was nestled into the crook of his neck. He could have sworn he felt the rise and fall of her chest, the gentle rhythm of her heartbeat. He smelled her shampoo. She was alive, and he was holding her, and… and then he'd panicked, just as he always did. The panic woke him up, as usual, and it was like she'd died all over again.
The door to the cell opened with a thundering crash, and suddenly the entire room was completely illuminated by the harshest light that Logan had ever seen. Blinded, he shut his eyes, covering them with his forearm, and cursing. He heard footsteps, eerily loud after his hours of silence. Two, maybe three people. He uncovered his eyes… shit. Squinting against the inhuman glare of the white tile walls, he saw two men in fatigues carrying very large guns. That, at least, was to be expected. It was the woman who stood behind them who aroused Logan's interest.
She was… unnatural. Her hair was too blonde, her appearance too smooth, her eyes were… dead. She smiled at him, and he fought a wave of revulsion. Her dead eyes were not kind as she looked him up and down, still smiling her thin-lipped, antagonistic smile. He straightened up as his eyes adjusted, desperately trying to ignore the mixture of the fiery pain behind his eyes and the dull ache of the wound he'd received earlier. It was one hell of a headache.
"Bring him," she said to the guards, who promptly stepped forward and pulled him to his feet. At least they'd let him keep the exo. At least he didn't have to suffer the indignity of having to be carried. Instead, they merely guided him along, large guns prominently on display, as they passed through a labyrinth of halls and corridors. They followed the blonde woman, and it felt like the descent into Hell.
"Abandon all hope, ye who enter here," he thought grimly to himself.
He was very careful to observe where he was going, but the hallways were all the same – grey and empty. Eventually, they took so many turns that he could only have returned to his cell on his own if he had a ball of yarn or some crumbs to follow. They didn't pass anyone on their journey, and Logan began to believe he wasn't at a Manticore facility at all. However, only moments later he saw the one piece of evidence that convinced him above all others. As they passed through one corridor, he happened to look to his right and see another running parallel to theirs through an open doorway. On the wall of the parallel hallway, he could clearly see the word DISCIPLINE in large, black letters. It was just like similar propaganda Max had described. It gave him an odd, pleasureless feeling of relief.
The room in which Logan found himself at the end of the journey resembled something of a control room. On wall was completely covered by computers, and the other was nothing more than a very large window. Actually, it appeared to be more a two-way mirror. The wall facing Logan had two doors, but they were both bolted shut. In the center of the room were chairs, three of them, facing the mirror. It resembled a movie theatre, but not one Logan wanted to spend any time in. His insidious usher tapped her long fingernails against one chair, gesturing for him to sit, but he shook his head. He'd been sitting for hours. She smiled again, and dismissed the guards. They left, but Logan knew they were only standing outside.
"So," she said softly, her voice dripping with disdain, "You're the great Eyes Only."
Logan didn't move, didn't even flinch. He had, after all, known it was coming. He'd had several hours to think about it, to prepare himself for it, to plan his response. Of course, his reply was nothing like he'd planned, but, then again, very little in his life ever went as planned.
"And you're Dr. Elizabeth Renfro," Logan replied, surprised that he could keep the anger out of his voice.
She laughed, "Well, so you have talked to Lydecker. I'm not surprised. Your information was too technical. You couldn't have gotten those details from 452."
The words startled him, and he knew that his face had shown her some of the effect her words had on him. What she couldn't see was the sudden clenching of his stomach, the invisible death grip on his heart, the piercing pain that seemed to tear him in half. In that second, he honestly could have killed her without a second thought, but the second passed, and he was calm again. This was business.
"What do you want?" he asked, careful to sound collected, cold, disinterested.
"You know what I want," Renfro replied, her face impassive. "I want your files – all of them. You have annoyed us enough."
"Right," Logan replied with a short, humorless laugh. "I'll just run on home and grab them."
"No, there's no need." Her perfectly tweezed eyebrow arched, "We have your computers. Now, I just need your passwords.
"It's not going to happen," Logan shrugged. Those files were people's lives. He hoped that she had goons trying to hack into them. Each file had a self-destruct order. As soon as a hacker passed a specific, electronic tripwire, he might as well have pulled out a giant magnet. The files would be gone –wiped clean – and rebuilding them could take... months? Years? Logan wasn't sure, but he'd worked on the program for eight months before he'd perfected it. He'd even tried it, after backing up all his files on his laptop, and then tried to recover the files. The program was effective, to say the least. He didn't have to worry. If he ever left Manticore, rebuilding the Informant Net would be difficult, almost impossible, but that was the least of his concerns.
"Oh, I know, you've probably installed some intelligent wipe on your computer to stop us. I'm sure it works, too, because you're not an idiot. You've proved that by staying alive this long. Here's the thing," she stopped, and her smile grew. Dread. Dread flooded through him in a flash, and he couldn't explain it, but he knew it was justified a moment later. "I have leverage," she cooed, her voice deceptively soothing.
She practically slid over to the wall, her fingers sliding over what appeared to be an intercom. She turned, gave him one last completely evil smile, and pressed the bright red button right below its speaker. She spoke into it, and for a second, her words didn't make any sense. "Kill him," he would have understood. Even "show him" would have made sense, considering the circumstances. She had mentioned leverage, after all. "Bring her in," just didn't make any sense at all. That is, it didn't make any sense until the door in the room behind the mirror opened, and two more large men entered the room, dragging an angry-looking Max behind them.
No! No. No, no, no, no,no,nonononono… his brain shouted at him. It wasn't her. It couldn't be her. He was delusional. They'd done something to him. It was the hours of sensory deprivation, it was the fact that he hadn't eaten for at least eight hours, it was… it was anything but Max. His brain, his logic, all insisted that the woman in front of him who bore such a strong resemblance to Max was not her. His heart, however, betrayed him. His gut churned, that tearing pain was back. He took a step forward, then another. He didn't even realize that he'd moved until he was right next to the glass. Oh, god…
"State your designation," Renfro breathed into the intercom, almost gleefully.
"Bite me," Max spat, eyeing the mirror wearily, her hand resting on her hip just like she always had. In an instant, the soldiers both had their guns pointed at her head.
Renfro smiled at Logan again, turning back to the intercom, and, emphasizing every word, repeated, "State your designation."
"X5-452," Max replied with a roll of her dark eyes, and immediately the guns were withdrawn.
Oh, god, Max… She was alive. He tried to keep himself calm, but he couldn't help reacting to the desperate ache inside himself. She was alive, and he had to see her, not just through glass, but face-to-face. He had to touch her, to make sure she wasn't a delusion, a perfect, flawless delusion. A shiver crawled up from the base of his spine, and could almost have tried to break through the glass.
"Well?" Renfro asked. "Do I get the passwords?"
"In exchange for what?" Logan asked, his voice betraying him with its thickness. Oh, god, no, please…
"Well, I don't know if you've noticed, but the soldier on the left has a syringe in his hand. Inside is a nasty little virus we cooked up a few weeks ago, specifically for this purpose." She stopped, and looked at him expectantly.
"What purpose?" Logan asked absently, unable to tear his eyes from the woman who stood only five feet away, separated only by glass and tinting. She was making a big show of inspecting her fingernails, but Logan saw her eyes dart to the soldier in question. She saw the syringe, and Logan could only wonder what was going through her mind.
"The X series were made to be immune to most diseases," Renfro explained. "So we had to create one she wouldn't be immune to. Now," she continued in her slow, almost taunting way, "Give me the passwords, and she'll be fine. Don't give me the passwords, and she dies a slow, painful, terrible death right in front of your eyes."
Slowly, Logan's eyes fluttered shut. How had he let this happen? He'd known all along that something like this would happen. He knew that he would have to make this choice. Oh, god, this wasn't fair. He couldn't be responsible for her death…
"You'd really throw away all that technology?" he asked, failing miserably at the light tone he tried to adopt.
"I've got a couple hundred more where she came from," Renfro replied with a shrug. Then, she leaned toward him and whispered, almost conspiratorially, "And the rest don't have her attitude. No, I won't miss 452 at all."
"Go ahead," she instructed into the speaker. That was all it took. That was Max's death sentence. She tried to avoid the sudden dive of the needle, but the other guard held her tightly, and the clear substance in the vial was injected into the soft skin of her neck. It was all over in an instant.
For a few seconds, nothing happened. Max merely glared into the mirror, her eyes glassy with hate. Logan silently prayed that Renfro was wrong, that Max was immune. He tried not to get his hopes up, but when nothing happened for over a minute, he couldn't help hoping that Max might be alright. Maybe she would be okay, and somehow they'd get out of there, and he wouldn't have to make the choice. He wouldn't have to kill her.
Max dropped to the ground like a stone, and all of Logan's hopes left his body in a silent moan of anguish. She began to shake violently, almost like one of her seizures. Maybe that's all it was… but that could still kill her.
What the hell was he doing? He couldn't just stand there! It was Max! He had the chance to do it over. He had the chance to save her life, just as he wished for every hour of every single day that passed. He could keep her alive. He could get her home. They could warn the informants…
The guards had stepped aside, and they were standing a good distance away, giving Logan an unobstructed view of Max as she suffered. He struggled with the feelings raging inside him, telling him to grab Renfro and tell he'd do anything she wanted if she just kept Max alive. She shouldn't have to die. She shouldn't have to die alone. She, of all people, should not have to suffer. She shouldn't die on the cold stone floor of Manticore.
"They're just strangers," Renfro coaxed. "You barely know them. This is Max. There's an antidote. I have it right here." She held up a syringe that matched the one with which the soldier had injected Max.
"I see that," Logan replied, trying to swallow, but finding his mouth was completely dry.
"Do you want her to die?"
Logan couldn't answer. He felt tears pricking at his eyes as the helplessness and rage coursed through him grew stronger with every wave of pain that shook Max's body. This couldn't be happening. He had to wake up now. He watched, horrified, as Max began to vomit, clutching her stomach as if to stop the pain. He couldn't look away.
"Give it to her," he ordered, more than aware of how useless it would be.
"You'll give me the passwords?"
"Give her the antidote," Logan repeated, forcing himself to tear his gaze away from Max long enough to look Renfro in the eye. It seemed to have the opposite effect of what he wanted. Instead of seeing forcefulness, she must have seen his weakness, and she must have seen the answer to her question.
"The passwords?"
"I CAN'T!" He yelled, and it echoed through the entire room.
"Well, then, Max dies."
Hundreds of people. They all trusted him. They would all be in danger if he gave the evil bitch what she wanted. Why did she want them anyway? Most of them had nothing to do with Manticore. Most of them didn't have anything to do with anyone anymore. Their cases were over. They'd begun new lives, innocent, normal lives, and they trusted him to keep them safe. They had families – husbands, wives, and children – all of whom were entrusted to Logan. How could he even possibly think of weighing their lives against the life of one woman? Because she was Max, and he needed her. He needed her like he needed air to breathe, and two months without her had sent him on a spiral so self-destructive that he'd ended up as Renfro's prisoner, watching as the woman he loved vomited blood. Oh, god…
"Please," he whispered, unable to watch anymore. He placed his hand against the deceptively cool glass and leaned his forehead against it.
"No," Renfro replied without a single trace of emotion.
"I'll do anything else," he begged, his eyes flying open at the sound of a low, anguished moan from the other side of the glass.
"You don't have anything else I want." Fucking bitch. "Hmm…" she pondered aloud, "I may have lied about the slow part. She doesn't seem to have much time left. Trust me – I've seen a lot of X5's die."
"She's a human being!" Logan shouted, more than aware of the desperate tremor in his voice.
"No, she's not. We made her. We can destroy her. That's the deal."
"She never agreed to any deal," Logan whispered. He didn't doubt that she was right about Max not having much time left. She wasn't shaking anymore. She was completely still. Her eyes stared at the glass in front of her, and he simultaneously wished she could see him, and wished she had no idea he was a part of her death. She had no one to comfort her this time.
"Let me in there," he pleaded.
"You can take her the antidote after you give me the passwords," Renfro taunted.
Logan shut his eyes. He couldn't. He couldn't, he couldn't, he couldn't! He wanted to more than anything else in the world, but he couldn't. Those people trusted him to keep them safe! He couldn't place them in the hands of these monsters! He just… he couldn't watch Max die, not again. He had his chance, the one he'd dreamed of, he could hold her in his arms again. He could tell her that he loved her. He could tell her that he was sorry, that he needed her, that he needed her alive so he could survive. He didn't care if every single one of his contacts loved someone the way he loved Max. She needed him, and he had to save her! But he couldn't sacrifice anyone to do it. It just wasn't right. He had to do the right thing. He had to protect his informants…
When time seemed to slow down, Logan knew it was over. Max began to shake again, a quaking sort of repetitive shiver that seemed to start at her toes and move upward in waves. She clenched her eyes shut, shook a few more times, and then she was still again. Her entire body just… relaxed.
"Oh, God, no…" Logan moaned, as an empty sob escaped his throat. He slid to the ground as the room around him began to spin violently. Somewhere in the distance, he thought he heard the smashing of a syringe against the floor, but it didn't even register as he crumpled, anguished, horrified, disgusted, and absolutely heartbroken.
"Well," Renfro informed him lightly. "Tomorrow, if you give me the passwords, I'll let you die."
He tried to push her away. He tried not to find her fascinating. He tried desperately not to fall in love with her. He'd known that it would happen one day. He'd always known that someone, someday would find out that Eyes Only loved someone, and then they would try to get what he knew through that person. It was the one thing he'd feared since the very first day. It was the one thing he knew he'd never be able to withstand. Only, when the time actually came, he did the right thing. He always did the right thing. It didn't matter what happened to him after that. He'd killed Max, and, in doing so, he'd killed himself.