A/N: Hello there! We hope everyone is having a good holiday season for those of you that celebrate. We are sorry that it took so long to update, but both of us are quite busy lately. We hope the longer chapter makes up for it?

Thank you so much for the reviews. They were truly appreciated, spurring us to continue! (:

The shadowy figure was nearing, and would have been completely obscured by the foliage if it had not been clad in tan coveralls and a dirty white jacket. It was a heavyset man, and his broad back was turned to the android.

With his keen vision, Logan watched as he fought back thoughts of lab-coats that were already swirling around in his head and had him quaking with fear. He slowly backed away and hid behind a tree. The stocky man was holding something, but Logan could not get a direct look at it. He wondered who this man could be, and where he had appeared from.

The twigs and underbrush snapped beneath the enormous oxfords, and the boy held his breath, afraid to move even a muscle. The man was definitely searching for something, eyes scanning the trees, and Logan believed that that "something" was likely to be him.

Slowly spinning, the man raised a long catch pole high in to the air, waiting with bated breath. Suddenly, he lunged forward, and the reward was a frightened yelp. He snorted happily.

"Gotcha' little fella!"

He lifted the cage by the handle with a grunt, and whistling he leaned the pole with the daunting noose on one end, to rest at his shoulder. Logan was too shocked to run for cover when he saw the man heading his way with the fox in tow.

The stranger came to an abrupt halt when he saw the frail-looking boy, slightly shadowed by the trees. His eyes bulged, and he blinked once to be sure that he wasn't imagining what he thought he saw. Finding the boy still there clearly paralyzed by fear, he drew in a sharp breath, then released a long low whistle.

"Hey there, little fella'," he called, speaking to him just as he had the fox, "it's okay, I won't hurt you. Come here now…"

Logan's heart raced, and he panicked when he realized that the noose might soon be around his own throat, just as it had been around his new friend's. He turned to run, twisting an ankle on the tree's root, and tumbling immediately to the ground on one bare knee.

He cried out, feeling the stinging pain where the hard dirt and debris had skinned it a raw pink. The predator, seizing the moment, abandoned the cage and chased after the terrified boy. The fox screeched in distress and pawed frantically at the locked door.

Panting, Logan immediately hopped up and sprinted away, despite the new hurt. Racing into the blackness of the woods, he sensed his pursuant heatedly behind him, huffing and puffing, and determined to overcome his prey.

"Wait! I swear I won't hurt you, boy! I can help you!"

Marina's kind blue eyes were forefront in Logan's mind, along with a stern warning; "Run, Logan. Run, and never look back."

This man might have plans to hurt him, or worse, take him back to the lab where Linda would be waiting to punish him. He could never go back there…

A strength, speed, and power that he could not begin to comprehend, came rushing from somewhere deep within him, and he raged onward, deeper into the thicket with adrenaline pumping through his veins.

The heavyset man was no match for the engineered boy, but he was experienced in navigating the forest, and fortunately for him, the boy was weakened from recent abuse. The time it would take for the android to regenerate full power was simply not available, so he put as much distance between himself and the stranger as he possibly could.

He only stopped when he could go no further. Praying he was finally alone, he rested at a tree to catch his breath and ponder a path. He slid to the base of the tree and listened to the frantic sounds of nature. The creatures seemed to be warning him with their calls, even the insects had joined the chorus.

Afraid to close his eyes for fear that he would be caught off-guard, he held them wide and spotted the red ring of vulnerable skin that had erupted from his knee-cap. He touched it and to his surprise, he hissed. He had not expected it to hurt for some reason. Certainly, he had felt far worse pain at the hands of the crew, but he wasn't expecting pain outside of those stark-white, medicinal walls. Why was he still hurting even though he had escaped from his prison?

A strange tightness in the back of his throat became almost unbearable when it reminded him of the suffocation he had endured during Linda's sadistic experimental torture. He began to choke…feeling himself slipping back into that horrible dark place where no one could hold him…. He panicked, coughed, sputtered, then clutched at his throat. There was that awful involuntary need to show emotion again, and it hurt as much as the pain itself.

Suddenly, the faint cries from the fox had him straining his ears to gauge its distance. Unfortunately, the distraction cost him his freedom. While he was still gasping for air and listening to the anguish of his new-found friend, he was grabbed from behind, a pair of solid, beefy hands pressing down on his small shoulders.

He shrieked, and the sound of his own primal scream terrified him as much as the forces that had fueled it. It sent him into a dizzying spiral of horror, until he fell weakly into the victorious man's arms.

"There, there, little fella. I believe half the world must be looking for you, " he chuckled gleefully.

"NO!" Logan cried, coming to when he heard the rumble of the man's overly cheery voice.

"Nooo..." Using the only word he had ever spoken once more, he swallowed nervously. He had learned that the tone of a person's voice could have quite the opposite meaning when it came to speech, and those contradictory signals could surely bring him pain. He wriggled to free himself.

"Now you listen to me," the man said, gripping the boy roughly to stop him from resisting, "you'll catch your death from cold out here dressed like that."

He peeked under the long white lab-coat the boy wore, surprised to find the young male completely nude beneath the thin cotton medical gown. Already envisioning the bad things that the man was planning to do his body, he kicked out wildly, catching him in the shin…hard.

"Oooh! Oooh! Oooh! Why you little—" The man stopped himself from continuing, and although red-faced and glowering, forced a phony smile that wound up looking more like a sneer."You are strong for such a little slim-jim, ain't ya'? I don't want to have to sedate you, now. Please just come with me," he said, tugging him along like another of his wounded animals.

Logan shook his head, his last effort to protest capture, before the man locked his brawny arms around his slender body, essentially creating an enclosure from which he could never escape. He yanked him tightly to his chest.

Logan stopped resisting, just as he always had when he was restrained in the past. He'd learned it was futile to even expend the effort, and afraid to disobey his makers, he would ultimately concede . He knew the punishment would only worsen if he fought the inevitable, anyway.

The man dragged him to where he'd left the pet carrier, and the fox watched them approach with earnest. The animal's eyes were fearful when it saw its captor returning. It cowered to the back of the cage with its tail between its legs. A near-by van was clearly the man's destination, and with both victims finally in tow, he made his way.

As soon as he opened the back doors, he flung Logan into one of the largest empty pens and slammed the door closed. The man broke into a toothy grin as he leaned down to eye the trapped boy, now looking very much like bug in a jar. The boy's dark brown eyes were huge with trepidation.

"Sorry, but I had to do that, young man. It's for your own good."

He pushed the cage back as far as he could, placing the one containing the fox right next to him, and slammed the doors shut. A shout of accomplishment rang out, as the man made his way around to the driver's seat.

"I'm gonna' be rich!" he hollered, as he did a little clumsy jig.

Barely fitting and uncomfortably placed, Logan began to whimper earnestly. The worker couldn't differentiate between the fox's cries and the boy's, but neither could the engineered boy, himself. He had little familiarity with his own vocal capabilities as of yet.

The enclosure was even smaller than the incubator he had grown accustomed to at the lab, and the metal wires bit deeply into his skin. When the curious contraption they were in began to rumble, Logan became even more terrified. He had no idea what was happening, and he tensed, making his stomach ache.

A long pointed snout forced its way through the opening of its cage to try and console the boy. The carriers slid to one side of the truck, then dangerously tilted. Logan curled into himself, becoming as small as possible to prevent himself from toppling over, but his tender knee scraped against the sharp corner of the door.

"Ow…" he murmured sadly, surprising himself with the new addition to his vocabulary.

His body was badly shaking with cold, fear and pain, but he still found a bit of comfort in the nearness of his furry companion and its warm, dry nose.

x-x

He wasn't quite sure just when he fell asleep, but he was certainly awoken harshly when the big, rumbling machine came to a stop with a forceful brake, finally making the cage he was in topple over.

He glanced around fearfully, becoming fully alert when the doors of the contraption flew open, and light pierced his perfectly engineered retinas. The man from before was talking into a small, black device that he held with one hand to his ear, whilst the other went to scratching his greasy, matted hair. Logan cringed as perspiration dripped off of his forehead in buckets.

"Yeah, yeah I got it...Nah, wasn't hard to find 'im when I realized he would be somewhere dark and secluded...'course I'll keep 'im here 'til tomorrow, but you have to give me that cash in full...yeah...sure, ok mate, later."

Logan watched as the black thing was slipped back into the man's trouser pocket, and he rubbed his meaty hands together. Greedily, the man licked his lips, locking his eyes on Logan's body for far too long to be normal.

The gingery companion that Logan had acquired, whimpered somewhere in the back, causing the man to break eye-contact and focus his attention on his intended prey. Lugging the smaller cage forward, he cackled hollowly.

"You're fur's gonna make me a small fortune, and the meat can be put to good use too. Not as good a use as your friend here, though." He spoke like that of a small child on Christmas, when they're opening the biggest present under the tree. "Fifty thousand dollars! Woohoo!"

Logan let out a small grunt as the man used the other hand to pick up his cage, and he slid to the side. Proceeding forward, he was taken through a door, and into a smoke infested abyss.

Logan hadn't smelled many things apart from the antiseptic cleaning supplies and the metallic machines at the lab, but now he couldn't have smelled anything worse. The putrid horror that was slowly invading his nostrils made him cough and splutter. It made him almost want to be back with Linda and her cruel experiments. Almost.

Scrunching his nose up, the fumes made his eyes sting and water, however he could still not release the droplets. The man cackled yet again at his reaction, as he took in a big whiff of the air in his house.

"Brilliant ain't it? Ahhh, the lovely smell of tobacco always makes me feel good to be home."

He stopped as he came into a spacious room with little in it, throwing down the two cages rather carelessly, not sparing a thought for the cargo they both held.

Logan glanced around the room. It again had a grayish haze that lingered, and contaminated whatever rested in the room. There were very few objects apart from a table, a chair that laid haphazardly on its side, and an object that Logan had never seen before. It was big and black, and hung on the wall. He had no idea what it could possibly be for, but he decided to think about that later, as the man drew closer to his cage.

Eerily gentle, the man slipped the locks of the metal prison he was in, and started to bring him out. Logan of course, started to kick and thrash around in his hold, trying to see if escape was possible, but the man's arms held fast and secure. Logan twisted and turned as he was brought over to that one chair in the corner of the room. The man somehow expertly overturned it in one motion, and sat down with Logan in his lap.

"Such a pretty little thing, aren't ya? So white and pure. They weren't kiddin' when they said you were lethal though. I mean look at ya', any guy or girl would have their heart stop at those juicy lips..." the man trailed off as his eyes were fixated on the subject of his words, licking his own chapped ones hungrily. "I ain't had any real company in my little house in...well in forever."

Logan immediately sensed the force of danger, after being around it all his life it wasn't hard to miss. Logan could detect the pheromones secreting from his form, waves radiating around them at a remarkable strength. He could sense the man drawing closer and closer, closing the gap between them. Any nearness between Logan and the beast had the tiny android on edge, and the gap decreased, gradually closing, he knew he needed to do something. This man was going to do something horrible to him, perhaps something worse than what had happened at the lab.

Taking a chance in the spur of the moment, Logan's quick and advanced brain calculated where he could enhance the most pain onto his enemies' body, and with a swift kick his captor had doubled over in sheer agony. The android tore away and left the man to drop to the floor and curl up in the fetal position, holding his crown jewels with tears in his scrunched eyes. He shouted, voice full of pain, for the brunette to come back, outright warned him that he would get hurt far worse out there all alone, but Logan had to at least try to free himself.

The man was subjecting him to as much torture than what awaited him at the lab which he was to return to the next day, so instead he ran. He sped along the corridors he had been carried through in the cage, photographic memory coming in handy as he never missed a turning. He quickly came to the door that they had all entered through when he remembered something. He could still hear that man crying out in the background, but he didn't spare a thought as he ran back for his only friend outside of the lab.

He came upon the creature curled up in his own cage, ears bent in utter fear. Its head snapped up as Logan bolted into the room at superhuman speed, unfastening the locks and grabbing the furry animal with his small hands.

He turned on his heels and headed back where he had come from, the small nap he had taken in that rumbling contraption doing wonders for his strength. Insults flew past his ears as the monster in the back of the house kept calling for him. From what Logan could tell, the kick he had given was only enough to give him a few more minutes before he would be hot on his tail.

Reaching the door, he wrenched the thing open with the one hand he had free, with a strength he had never possessed. The old wood buckled and splinters pierced into his hand, but the pure adrenaline was nothing he had felt before either. It spurred him on and kept him going.

The wind was roaring past his ears, breath gasping out as he fought on through the exhaustion of all the running. He didn't know how long he had been sprinting, his brilliant mind hadn't had time to configure the estimates within the space/time continuum on his planet, all the nanoseconds passing by without recognition, as the only thing he could concentrate on was the pure, blinding fear that had swept through his whole being.

He knew that he had long lost that burly man who was holding him captive. It didn't take a genius to work that out. The man had to have been at least 380 pounds and then some. He wouldn't have been able to keep up no matter how hard he tried.

As Logan turned into what seemed a fairly small, quiet neighborhood, he knew he couldn't continue on for much longer like this. It was already pitch black out, and even though he had perfect night vision, he didn't feel very keen being out in the cold evening temperatures, alone in the darkness. His sweat-soaked gown clung to him and it reminded him of all the lonely nights in the lab, where he only had the infrared overhead lamp to cast an eerie shadow along the walls. He didn't like it.

One house, medium-sized with shutters beside the windows, trimming along the edges, and a small porch sticking outside, caught his attention. Adjoined to the house, was a small path leading round to a gate, probably leading into a backyard, but Logan didn't know the details. All he saw was a gap, big enough for him to squeeze into with his little friend, who was still clutched firmly in his arms, and get some shelter for the night.

Without really assessing the surroundings, he pressed forward, making sure to at least be quiet when treading closer to the house. He could hear happy conversion buzzing from the interior, and a twang of feeling ran up his veins, piercing his heart.

His eyes became prickly again but like last time, he couldn't cry. He couldn't describe what he was feeling, all he knew was that he wanted to be able to talk to people like that, to have friends and live normally, whatever that was.

He wanted his friends at the lab, back. Marina, Michael, and David always made him feel better when everything else was making him feel horrible. But as he decided that maybe, staying in this place wasn't such a good idea, he heard the click of a door opening. His spine ran cold with fear, because as he turned around, he found himself face to face with something..three boys.

There were four sets of wide eyes at that moment, theirs and his. The android turned on his heels to run, still clutching his rigid friend. The fox bolted from his arms, landing with a pained cry on the sore paw.

"No!" Logan cried, watching his only friend take cover behind the nearby hedges.

The three stunned boys still stared, jaws slack as they held on to one another. They blinked fervently at the pale boy in the over-sized white jacket who had somehow landed in their yard.

"I told you I heard something..." Carlos finally spoke, trailing off as the dark eyes of the stranger met his own.

The boy seemed torn between running away from them, and to them. His fox friend was no longer visible in the darkness of the night, and frankly he was too tired to chase after him. He sank to his knees, body going completely lax and waited for the new pain that was sure to come.

One of the taller boys backed away slightly from the doorway. "We promised my mom!" he whispered loudly. "Guys!"

"What? We can't leave him out here like this!" the smallest one insisted. "Besides, he's not scary at all! Actually, he's seems pretty cool."

"Yeah...but..." the other tall one said hesitantly, "Kendall's right. Mama Knight will kill us."

Logan blinked, and his heartbeat steadied just a bit. These humans seemed to be a little frightened of him for some odd reason. He watched the lighter-haired one glance nervously over his shoulder as he edged nearer again, to study him.

"Hey," he whispered to him. "Are you that android on the lose, or what?"

Android? Logan didn't know what the word meant, but shouldn't these boys be pursuing him by now? Wasn't that what everyone did? He shook his head, looking deeply perplexed, and all three boys could see the fear in his his eyes.

"Do you talk?" the small dark-haired one asked.

Logan bit his lip, shifting uncomfortably on the wet grass that stung his sore knee. He thought for a moment before raising a trembling hand. He placed his palm to his having chest for a moment, then to his mouth. The boys watched with interest. The hand reached out toward them, before slowly lowering.

"I don't understand," whispered James in confusion.

"I think he's trying to tell us that he speaks from his heart?" Kendall said uncertainly.

"I think he's probably telling us he's cold and wants a place to hang!" Carlos chimed in.

"Kendallllll!" Katie called from somewhere behind them, startling them into a strange sort of dance.

The boy's eyes were even more frightened when he heard the female voice shouting. He twisted to rise and run.

"Hey, it's okay! Don't go!" James called. He and Carlos ran to help him up, and easily guided his thin body toward the garage.

"Keep him in there until I figure this out!" Kendall said hurriedly, turning to find his younger sister before she found them.

Not certain why he wasn't protesting, Logan allowed the two boys to steer him through a door into the darkness of the garage. He was decidedly afraid of the dark, but he didn't protest. No matter where he was, he learned, there was something to fear and believed it was better to stay where he was. There was something he couldn't fathom that he had found in all three pairs of eyes he'd just met. It was what Marina taught him was called kindness.

Thank you so much for reading. We hope to continue over the holiday if you wish.

xoxox

CrumpetCapers and swagUPwindowsDOWN