Facility was deathly silent. Only a moment ago alarms had blared. People had been running around, screaming, tumbling over each other in their haste to get out. To reach the heavy blast doors before the emergency program shut them down for good. Of course nobody had gotten to those doors in time. Same program that sealed the hive released halon gas to the air conditioning system. Gas spread throughout the whole facility, efficiently neutralizing all the signs of life.

Incident had been successfully contained. Clean-up protocol would follow.

She woke up gagging and gasping for air. Let go of the hand she was still holding, and heard a body falling to the floor with heavy thud. She rolled on her side on the table and peeked over the edge. Cold and dead eyes of a lab technician met hers. Young man, barely in his twenties. He had been preparing her for the procedures when the sound of the alarms had pierced the air. Her reaction had been purely instinctual. She had grabbed his wrist. That move had probably saved her life. When halon had landed from the vents on the ceiling she had held on. Technician had been screaming and struggling, halon suffocating them both, her mutation pulling the last remnants of life from the technician in to her. That small amount of energy had probably been the only thing separating her from the blade of the Reaper.

She sat up and rubbed her face groggily, wondering when they were going to notice that something had happened. Room should have been swarming with guards already, all armed to the teeth with live ammo and tasers. After all, she was the one successful project of theirs. Prime example of their skills and knowledge. Lethal to the core.

When nothing was happening she stumbled down from the table, thankful for the earlier interruption that had prevented the technician to put on restraints on her. She rubbed her arms, trying to ward off the chills wrecking her nude body. Grimaced to the large mirror that covered one of the walls. Two-sided. They were probably watching from the other side. Observing. Taking notes. Studying her. Let them. She turned her back to the mirror and grabbed the dead technician, stripping off his lab coat and putting it on. It was far too big for her, but when she rolled up the sleeves and tied the sash real tightly… It was better than nothing. And she was warming up already.

Something clinked softly and thumped against her chest every time she moved. She grabbed it. A dog tag. One word engraved on it. Rogue. She scrunched her forehead. It didn’t sound right. Rogue. It was tickling something at the back of her mind, but she pushed it aside. She had more oppressing matters to attend to. Something had happened. She was sure of it. She was in here alone and free. Their pet project. Surely somebody would have noticed her by now?

She sat on the table when her knees started to give up. What ever they had been pumping in to her system for the past two weeks had wrecked havoc with her nerves and muscles. She felt so weak and clumsy. Like a new born baby. She shook her head, trying to clear off the cobwebs. And realized that she couldn’t hear the steady hum of the air conditioning. Couldn’t see flickering screens of the computers as they went on, calculating possibilities and combinations. Screens were dark. Complete silence wrapped around her like a heavy quilt, more suffocating than the halon few moments ago. And she knew she had to get out.

Quick search through the lab coat’s pockets produced a keycard with set of codes attached to it with yellow post-it. She resisted the urge to grab the dead technician and kiss him. Instead she stumbled to the door with rubbery feet, pushed in the code to a keypad right next to it and slid the keycard through a slot under the keypad. Lock rattled, then door started to turn open.

She stood at the doorstep, half in, half out from the room, listening. Listening the silence that filled the corridor in front of her. It wasn’t right. There should have been people. Lots of people. She was sure of it. There had been a crew of ten people assigned to her project alone, and she was aware that there had to be several other projects going on simultaneously. Where the hell was everybody?

She stepped forward, leaning against the wall hesitantly. Waiting for the alarms when she crossed yellow line painted on the floor. Then remembered that they had removed her bracelet because they were going to test her today. No alarms then.

She didn’t know which way to go. At her left the corridor ended to a locked door. At her right it divided in two. One path was marked with yellow line of paint, the other with green. A yellow marked operational unit, green was probably for holding cells. She turned towards the door. Tried the keycard and every code on the list she had taken from the technician. It wouldn’t open. Apparently what ever was behind that door, technician hadn’t been allowed to enter there. That left her only two options. She already knew what she would find from the green corridor. It was the area they had kept her when they weren’t working on her. A dead-end. She chose the yellow corridor.

She passed several doors with a sign ‘Examination’ and a number attached on them. Numbers were decreasing along her way from twenty, until she reached the door number one. Long walk had brought her to a large, open area. Several desks were scattered all over the floor, some of them turned over. Computers, stacks of papers and pencils, calculators, erasers, all kinds of office supplies were littering the floor as well, some of them broken, crushed almost beyond recognition. From here she found the first signs of what had actually happened.

Door of the examination room 1 hung lopsided from its hinges, like somebody had tried to tear it off. Room itself was a mess. Mutilated corpses strewn across the floor, blood staining gleaming metal surfaces of the walls and floor, medical instruments thrown carelessly over the mess. Deep gouges, three in a row, decorated the door and the doorframe. Lock had been torn off and thrown aside. Something or someone had decided that enough was enough.

She suppressed the shivers that run down her spine. There really was no reason to be afraid. What ever it had been that had mutilated these doctors was most likely as dead as its victims by now. As far as she knew, she was the only one equipped with an ability to survive through cleaning procedure, and if she hadn’t gotten scared of the alarms and grasped technicians bare wrist, even she would be dead as a doornail.

One good thing came out of the carnage though. There was a young nurse among the victims, approximately same size as her. She couldn’t bring herself to take the woman’s blood stained clothes, but she took her shoes. They weren’t exactly her size, they were tad too small, but again they were better than nothing. Sensible white sneakers. She crouched to tie the laces when she heard a noise coming somewhere down the yellow corridor that stretched past the hall outside of the examination room 1. It sounded like something had fallen to the floor. Something heavy and fragile. Maybe a computer. She tied the laces before standing up. Safer that way. If she needed to run she wouldn’t trip over.

She sneaked to the direction of the noise. It came again. She stopped briefly to pick up a huge, machete-like paper cutter that somebody had torn off from the copy machine standing at the corner of the hall. It was stained with blood. Somebody had already used it as a weapon. Good enough proof for her that it worked. She grasped it to her right hand just as the lights flickered and shut down, and she was plunged in to complete darkness, her only guide the constant crashing noises coming from the end of the corridor.

At first she thought that her eyes started to adjust to the surrounding darkness when she could discern faint outlines of objects on her way. Then she giggled a bit for her own stupidity when she glanced upwards. Red emergency lights were turning on. Soon the whole corridor and everything around her was shrouded to a red glow that distorted colors, darkening reds and blurring others.

Crashing sounds had stopped. Now she could see human shaped figures at the end of the corridor. They were walking towards her. Dark clothes. Like some kind of uniforms. And they were carrying weapons. Bright, red beams pierced the red air, decorating her chest with pretty, bright red dots. She froze instantly. They were aiming at her. Aiming. She dropped the cleaver like paper cutter she had been carrying and raised her hands above her head. One of the figures approached her, careful not to block others from firing if situation that required, and stopped next to her. She couldn’t see the face; it was covered with complicate looking black mask. From the outlines of the body she assumed it was a man. He reached his hand and grabbed the dog tag that hung on her chest. Brought it closer to the eye sockets of the mask.

“Rogue. Relax, people. She’s not the one we’re after,” figure spoke. Bright red dots disappeared from her chest, all but one of them.
“Why is she still alive, then? I was under the impression that our target was the only one with regenerative powers?” One of the figures standing further down the corridor asked, weapon still trained at her chest.
“I don’t know, and I don’t particularly care either. As long as this little bitch doesn’t cause troubles, she’s not our concern. We’re here to extract Wolverine. Termination team will take care of her later. Move up, people. We have to find the bastard before it finds a way out from here!” Figure standing next to her spoke. The group run past her down the corridor, disappearing soon from her view.

She picked up her improvised weapon again, starting to direction where the group had come. They had gotten in to the hive somehow. Maybe she could get out through the same way. When she heard firing from behind her back she didn’t turn to look, but started to run fast forward. Turning to look would have cost her precious seconds. She kept her gaze up front, soles of the sneakers slapping against the floor, sound of it echoing from the walls. She didn’t have to run far when firing stopped as abruptly as it had started, and bloodcurdling screams replaced the sounds of the guns. What ever the Wolverine was, it sounded that the group had found it. Or it had found the group. She wasn’t planning to stick around to see the end result of that encounter. Judging from the screams, and the way they ended one after another Wolverine was something to be avoided at all costs.

They may have made her curious, but they hadn’t made her stupid. She was a survivor. She’d learn from new experiences, adapt to any kind of environment, she was fast and agile as well as inventive and able to absorb memories, knowledge and life through direct skin contact.

She kept running long after the screams ended, flying past locked doors and intersections, only stopping when she arrived to a grand hall. Tall pylons supported roof somewhere high above her head. Wide staircase led to heavy looking blast doors that were for her disappointment tightly shut. If group she had encountered had entered the hive through here, they had sealed the doors after them. This wasn’t the way out after all. And now that her breath had evened out she could hear footsteps from the corridor. Soft panting, and bare feet hitting the floor quietly. Quiet growls. Sounded like something was tracking her. Looked like she would get to meet the Wolverine after all.

She scanned the room she was in quickly. Currently sealed main entrance and the corridor were the only ways out. She braced herself, feet apart, crouching slightly. Grip from paper cutter firm but her wrist loose, both hands on her sides. Ready to react.

It was a man. Or at least something that resembled a man. Standing on two feet, covered in blood and grime, impossible looking metal blades protruding from his hands, wild, feral eyes taking his surroundings with a swift glance and locking in to her. Loud growl echoed from his throat and he barreled straight on to her, razor-sharp blades digging in to her stomach, cutting and shredding, tearing deep gouges and puncturing her, coming out through her back.

Sheer surprise made her scream when he lifted her from the ground up in the air. She couldn’t feel her legs anymore. He had damaged her spine. Suddenly his eyes narrowed, left the lab coat and zeroed in to dog tag that was dangling right in front of his face. Her field of vision started to blur when metal claws keeping her upright suddenly disappeared and she fell on the floor. Wolverine kneeled next to her, grabbing the lab coat and tearing it off, throwing it away and spitting after it. Then turned his gaze back to her. There was something shimmering in his eyes. An apology? She spat out the blood rising to the back of her throat and reached with her hand, clasping her fingers around his wrist. He jerked back from surprise, tried to struggle loose, but it was futile. Connection opened and pulled him in.

As curious as she was she concentrated on sucking life rather than memories. She could get to know him better later if he survived the pull. Right now it was more important to repair the damage he had done to her.

Whenever she had drained somebody before, accidentally or on purpose, the flow of life from her victim to her had been sluggish, very slow at best. Sudden rush of pure power that assaulted her system now from touching Wolverine knocked her unconscious. Her only consolation was, that Wolverine would most likely end up dead, or in to a coma at very least, so she would be safe from further attacks from him for the duration of her unconsciousness.

She came back to her senses momentarily, kicking, screaming and flailing her arms. Somebody was dragging her over the floor. She felt the lab coat under her, added most likely to lessen the friction. Her hands were tied together and her captor held the leash, dragging her after him. She felt a sharp kick to her ribs and plummeted in to darkness once again.

He wasn’t quite sure of what to do with her. He had detected her scent when he had been scouting a possible way out. At first he had thought that she was one of the doctors that had been working on him earlier. Just somehow miraculously escaped from his claws for the first time when his restraints had malfunctioned. He had skewered her. First instinctual reaction. Then the lab coat she wore had parted, he had seen a glimpse of bare skin underneath, and a dog tag. Dog tag that identified her the same as him. Object of their perverse studies, not a tormentor.

Somehow she had knocked him momentarily unconscious and healed herself before he came back to his senses. That alone was enough to tickle his curiosity. He had thought that he was the only one of his kind. He had taken her with him. She had still been unconscious. Healing took a lot out of her it appeared. He had heard a noise coming from the direction of the blast doors. They had started opening, and he had seen a group of black clad men standing on the other side of those doors, their weapons trained at him and the girl on his arms. He had bolted, running deeper in to the maze of hell, hoping to find a suitable place to hide until he could get his bearings and maybe have a chat with the girl to see what was going on.

If she decided not to cooperate with him, he could always use her against the secondary team that had been sent after him. Leave her naked somewhere, she’d make a ruckus and they’d be bound to investigate. He could just sit back and enjoy the show. At least as long as it took them to subdue or kill the bitch. With any luck she’d manage to take out at least few of them before she went down.

He jogged deeper in to the facility, dragging her unconscious form after him. He wasn’t going to touch her if it wasn’t absolutely necessary. Not after what had happened when she’d touched his bare skin. Skin. That had to be it. She was toxic. Probably lethal to anybody except him. The second main line of the development.

He was made extremely durable. Nearly impossible to kill. They had tried messing up with his skin, but when that had failed, they had coated his bones with an alloy that made them unbreakable. They had also enhanced his senses and super-charged his regenerative abilities. From what he had seen and witnessed she was the exact opposite of him. Fragile, easy to kill. Easy to capture. But she had something in common with him, too. She was as lethal as him. As well trained as him. And as hard to contain as him. That he had learned the hard way.

When she regained her consciousness he had just kicked her carelessly to keep her quiet. His bare foot had connected with her equally bare side for mere second, and he’d already felt the pull. Luckily she’d lost her consciousness when he kicked her, because that small jolt had made him stagger and loose his balance. He had dropped the leash and slumped against the wall, panting and gasping for air. And for a brief moment he had actually wondered whether to abandon her right then and there. Then he had managed to find some clothes for him, shoes, and a bottle of chloroform, as well as some surgical masks. One mask, soaked with chloroform and tied over her face was enough to keep her under.

He kept running, staying ahead of his pursuers, changing corridors randomly to loose them from his tracks. He had gone past the point where he actually recognized his environment. Rooms, halls and corridors he used now were the older part of the hive. He remembered being here once, at the beginning of the program Wolverine, but it had been years ago. For some reason the key card he had found from the pocket of the lab coat the girl had been wearing was working like a charm to almost every door down here. Down here. He had taken already three flights of stairs, and he could still hear them behind him. Whispering and sneaking around in darkness.

“Where the fuck is everybody?” He muttered silently. Hundreds of people worked in this facility. When halon filled the place, they had been dropping like flies everywhere around him. Yet when he had regained his consciousness only bodies he had seen were those he had made by himself in that hellhole they called the examination 1. Well, that really wasn’t his main concern. His first priority was to stay alive. Finding a way out came second on his list. Making certain people hurt was the last on his short but punctual list of things-to-do-when-shit-hits-the-fan. One group he had already taken care of. The ones sent here to contain him. That had felt good. He hadn’t felt that good in ages. To plunge the claws they had given him in to living tissue, hear it tear, feel the blood coating his hands warm and slippery. Taste it at the back of his throat with every breath he took. Heart them scream; see that last glimmer of hope in their eyes, just before he slit their throats. Smell the scent of their fear and coppery tang of blood covering everything.

It had taken him a moment to calm down after that. To get a hold of his raging hormones and will away his throbbing erection.

He glanced towards the unconscious, still nude girl. Just his luck. Fuckable looking female. Right age; right size, ripe ass and perky tits that made saliva pool on his tongue. And she was untouchable. Quite literally. He grabbed a blanket from a stretcher somebody had left on the corridor and threw it over her. Out of sight, out of mind. At least he could pretend so.

She had the sense to stay silent when she opened her eyes. There was a foul taste in her mouth, and she could still smell the scent of chloroform. She turned her head carefully, prepared for yet another attack. It never came. She lay on the floor, on top of the lab coat, covered with a thick blanket from her throat to her toes. Her hands were free. There was no sign of her captor anywhere. Instead of Wolverine five men, dressed to black uniforms, wearing black gas masks stared down at her. As soon as she moved to sit up the barrels of their guns turned to point at her. She shrugged off the blanket and raised her hands above her head, giving them her best impression of puzzled, scared little girl. Trembling lower lip, wide eyes and everything. Lab coat that had revealed from under her strengthened the impression. Guns were still pointing at her, but she could see men holding them relaxing visibly. Nothing to worry about here. Just a scared lady doctor, survived from the halon and the maniac running around rampant on pure luck.

She waited for the exact moment. The moment when even the last one of them had filed her away as nothing important, certainly nothing threatening, before she made her move, turning on her hands and knees, twisting her hips sharply, sweeping all five of them down on the floor with a one powerful sweep of her legs. Guns went off, but their aim was ruined. She could feel few bullets scraping her, one took away the tip of her ear, but it wasn’t important. She’d have the time to look in to it later. Right now the important thing, priority number one was to disarm all five of them permanently.

She crushed the windpipe from two of them with her knees, head butted third one to unconsciousness and grabbed bare wrists of the two still breathing and operational, pinning them down with the power they had given her. When she felt them shrivel away, and their pulse disappeared she turned her attention back to the one she had only hurt, intending to finish him off. She managed to catch a glimpse of his booted feet before they disappeared behind the corner further down the corridor. She let out a low growl, sprinting after him. Her right. Her kill. Nobody had the right to take it away from her.

She skidded to a halt when she rounded the corner. Wolverine stood there holding the unconscious man propped against the wall with his left forearm. His right hand was busy removing the man’s clothing. Trousers, vest and a shirt dropped to the floor. Gas mask followed suit. She knew Wolverine had heard her approaching. He had merely glanced over his shoulder, acknowledging her presence and turned his attention back to the man in front of him.

He jostled the limp form around, man’s face pressed against the wall and started undoing the zipper of the jeans he was wearing. She could only stand and watch. Wolverine turned to look at her, one hand holding the man, other stroking his own, rock hard cock.
“You already had your fun, bitch. Back off. This one’s mine…” He growled, positioning himself and plunging in, rousing the unconscious man from the stupor and tearing bloodcurdling scream from his throat.

Wolverine took his time with his victim, making him scream and bleed, beg for mercy, assaulting his anus first, and when the man stopped screaming and went limp he let him fall on the floor to a seated position. She could see blood pooling under the man who was only barely conscious. Wolverine took a firm grip from his short-cropped hair, keeping his head upright, and knocked off his teeth with his other hand before fucking his face, and finally suffocating him with his cock. Just after that he seemed satisfied enough to let himself go, and he shuddered, thrusting sharply few times before discarding the body on the floor, tucking his spent cock back in and zipping his jeans.

“Happy now?” She asked. Wolverine narrowed his eyes.
“No. But it’s a good start,” he grunted, kicking the corpse lying at his feet. She eyed his clothes enviously. From where he had managed to find civilian clothing in here puzzled her. Jeans, comfortable looking flannel shirt and sturdy looking brown boots. Well, beggars can’t be choosers. She picked up the clothes he had stripped off from the man he had maimed and tried them on. They were from the larger side, but fortunately the man had had a narrow waist. His belt stopped the trousers from falling off completely. They rode low on her hips, but the long waist of the shirt covered the strip of bared skin nicely.

“Ready to go?” Her grim companion asked. He had been shuffling his feet impatiently the whole minute it took her to arrange her clothing so that she wouldn’t trip down when she started to move around.
“Soon. Aren’t you going to finish him off?” She asked, pointing at the body that had started twitching on the floor. Wolverine’s eyes narrowed again. This time the expression wasn’t one of annoyance. Utter confusion flickered over his features momentarily, then he shrugged his wide shoulders, stepped on the skull of the man and grind it to a pulp under the heel of his boot.
“Better?” He spat the word out like it was a curse rather than a question. She nodded. Suddenly Wolverine tilted his head, his ears visibly perking up.
“You left some unfinished business back there as well…” He huffed, then suddenly reached towards her, grabbing her now covered shoulders and throwing her on the floor.
“Get down.”

She heard firing from behind her back. Wolverine stepped over her, swaying slightly, and tore forward, his angry howl nearly drowning the echo of the guns and the sickening sound of the bullets tearing in to flesh. She could feel something wet, warm and sticky raining on her back, then more growling, and a small screeching sound, like nails on a chalkboard. She dared a quick glimpse over her shoulder, keeping her head still lowered.

Wolverine was running in the hail of bullets towards four black clad figures at the end of the corridor, his claws oozing out through his knuckles. She could see bullets piercing his flesh, and craters they left knitting shut almost instantly. She closed her eyes and tried to crawl inside of the floor when she realized what the sticky substance on her back was. She was splattered quite generously to bits and pieces of Wolverine.

She heard more growling. Guns were now silent. Wolverine was cursing. Soft thuds when something heavy hit the floor. Then an angry snort and footsteps coming to her direction. She rolled up and met Wolverine’s gaze. He was walking towards her, carrying a severed head from the eye sockets of the gas mask, raising it higher and shaking it.
“This is how it’s done. This! Looks like they did a bang up job when they worked on you and gave you your ‘gift’,” he hissed, dropping the head and kicking it sharply when it was still falling towards the floor. The head bounced from the walls and ceiling like a soccer ball, thudding softly forward until it disappeared from her view, bouncing down a set of stairs in front of them.
“Well, excuse me if I don’t meet your strict criteria. I’m not quite the psychopath as you are. They didn’t stir up my head quite as much as they apparently did for yours… And besides, they were dead when I left them. No pulse, no heartbeat,” she quipped. Wolverine grimaced.
“Right. Sure they were. That’s why they were still walking around and firing at us…” He snorted and started walking towards the stairs.

He was starting to regret taking her along somewhere round the hour two of their not so pleasant hooking up. She was nagging constantly. It had gotten to a point where just a twitch of her finger was enough to send his brain crashing down to the paths of the homicidal rage, coloring his already distorted and red view even darker shade of red. He had made one… One assessment of her abilities in the noble arts of dealing death, and she had taken it as an insult towards her, her family (which he very much doubted even existed, if they did, they were probably the ones responsible of her getting in here), and the whole shebang of women in general.

“Make even one peep more and I swear I’ll gauge your eyes out and find something inventive to do with those empty sockets!”
“Something inventive? Like you did with that fucker earlier? Raping is so inventive, indeed!”
“Fuck you. You’re just jealous and pissed off because I got to kill them all after you had botched up the whole deal!”
“I didn’t botch it up! They were fucking dead when I left them! Dead! Two of them had a broken neck and a crushed windpipe, and two of them I touched and held on so long that I couldn’t hear them in my head anymore! Read my lips: They. Were. Dead!”
“Why can’t you just admit the truth? Dead people do not walk around like…”
“Like those dead people?” She asked, pointing towards five men and two women wearing scrubs that were currently staggering towards them, every one of them missing limbs and sporting clearly lethal injuries starting from one of the women having a sturdy looking metal rod buried to her abdomen, ending to one of the men having half of his head blown off.

“Holy shit!”
“What the hell is going on down here?” She gasped.
“Don’t know. Don’t really care about it either. I just want to find a way out from here,” Wolverine grunted, swiping the keycard through a slot on a side of a door at their left, punching in a random code from a list attached to the card. Door opened with a silent hiss and they stumbled in to darkness, door closing automatically behind them.

Quick search of their surroundings revealed the nasty truth. They were in a closet. Small and dark janitor’s closet. And on the other side of the door stood waiting bunch of people, and if he had read them right they were hungry as hell, and for some reason perceived him and the girl as food.
“What the hell have they done to those people? And how can they be still walking around when they’re dead?”
“They’re not dead,” he grunted, knocking the walls. Solid concrete.
“What do you mean? Not dead? Did you see that man? Half of his head was missing!”
“They may have been dead at some point, but right now I can hear their heartbeat, and they don’t smell dead. That’s enough proof for me that they’re very much alive.”

Girl huffed and threw up her arms, bringing them down with exaggerated sigh.
“Fine! They’re alive! Just missing major important parts of their anatomy! How the hell is it possible that they’re still alive?”
“How the fuck should I know? I have been spending most of my time cooped up in my cell. Only times I have been out from there they have been working on me and I have been screaming through the most part of it, so I may have missed some key points from their conversations!” He growled, trying to calm down so he could think more clearly. He was too riled up. And the girl wasn’t helping the matters. He could smell frustration and his own blood on her, and everything was laden with generous layer of fear. She was afraid. Afraid of everything and anything.

“Stop being so fucking afraid. It’s making me so fucking hard that it hurts.”
“And that is supposed to stop me from being afraid? Are you fucking nuts?”
“Yeah. I’m not the most stable person to hang around with, but stop yanking my chain and you just might get out of this hellhole unscathed.”
“Ha.”
“What?”
“I said ‘ha’. As in Ha-fucking-ha! As long as I keep my skin turned on you can’t even touch me! I’m not afraid of you, you freaking Neanderthal! I’m afraid of those dead people that keep popping up from behind every corner!”
“They’re not dead! Try to get it through your thick skull! They’re alive, probably made for some reason just like us, and at the moment hungry as hell, and we’re the main course of their meal!”
“I don’t fucking care if they’re dead or not! I’m scared of them anyway! They’re not supposed to walk…”

Something tickled the back of his mind. Something she had said. Something she had revealed, accidentally or for purpose he did not know.
“You can control your skin?” He asked interrupting her tirade.
“Yes. So what?”
“What the fuck are you still doing in here? Why haven’t you escaped before?”
“Duh. They were able to override my control. They had this collar they used to turn my skin on and off. They took it off only when they drugged me for the tests.”
“Figures. Turn it off.”
“What?”
“You heard me. Turn your skin off.”
“Do you think I’m a moron? Why the hell would I do that?”
“In case you haven’t noticed we’re cooped up pretty tight in here. I don’t want to end up twitching on the floor if you bump against me. Turn it off!”
“As long as I’m locked up with you my skin stays on.”
“Fine. I was in the mood for some hack and dice anyway…” He grunted and shouldered his way past the girl, finding the keypad from the side of the door and swiping the card through it. Then swore loudly.

“What is it?”
“Night vision wouldn’t happen to be part of your repertoire?” He asked.
“No. Why?”
“I can’t see the damn codes.”
“This is unbelievable…” Small hand grasped his wrist, then the slip of a paper containing the codes was snatched from his fingers. He wrenched free from her grip and lunged away from her, hitting the back of his head and toppling over a shelf, making cleaning supplies rain on both of them.
“Jeesh. You’re jumpy…”
“Jumpy? Fuck! Do that again and I’ll skewer you!” Door swishing open and horde of bleeding and growling people rushing in forced him to forget the girl momentarily.

They were pushing him back against the shelves. He could see the girl standing behind them, holding keycard and the codes. Somebody was biting his ankle, chewing and growling, tearing off big chunks of flesh and skin. They were everywhere, grasping, kicking, biting and hitting him. He kicked the one on the floor and grimaced when he felt wide strip of skin peeling off from his leg. He unsheathed his claws, intending to whack his way through the crowd when door closed, plunging him in to complete darkness again. Locked inside of the tiny closet with at least five people that were trying to make a meal out of him.

“I’ll fucking gut the bitch! Let the fuck go of me! Let go! Let go!” Panic had nothing to do with it. Not at all. He was just pissed off. That’s what he kept telling himself while tackling with his persistent attackers. Scent of blood was overwhelming. Large portion of it was his, but even larger was theirs. Every swipe he made he could feel his claws slicing through flesh and bone, and they were screaming. Screaming and growling, and pushing even closer in the crowded space, teeth snapping and tearing in to his flesh.

Door swished open again and finally he managed to struggle free from their grasp and stumble out. He heard the door closing behind him, swirled around and grabbed the girl that stood in front of him, crushing her between his body and the wall, his teeth bared, claws hovering just inches above her throat. And there was no fear on her face. She ducked under the blades, arms curled around his throat and for a moment he thought she was going to try to finish what they had started in the closet.

Moments ticked by and nothing was happening. Full skin on skin contact, and nothing was happening. He could smell salt, and feel something wet trickling down the side of his throat. She was crying. The girl was crying.
“It took so long to get it open… I thought you’d be dead already…” She spluttered. He backed off from her, untangling her arms from around him. She slumped against the wall, watery eyes fixed to him.
“Not dead. And not going to die any time soon. Do that again and I’ll slice you to ribbons…”
“Do what?” She asked puzzled when he crouched to check his left leg. Wound had already healed over.
“Between the two of us I’m the bigger bastard. Remember that, and we’ll get along just fine,” he grunted, turned and started walking to direction he assumed would bring them fastest to the nearest staircase. He heard her running after him, then she grabbed the sleeve of his shirt.
“Hands off or I’ll lop them off.”
“Wait! You think I did it on purpose? Close the door and leave you there?” She asked. He tilted his head and narrowed his eyes.
“Yeah.”
“I didn’t. The door closed automatically. It took me some time to find the right code to open it.”

He couldn’t smell a lie on her. She was still afraid, but there were no telltale signs that she was trying to lie to him.
“Why the hell did you set me free then?” He asked. Had it been the other way around, the girl in the closet with those freaks, he’d walked off without a second thought.
“Duh! Because you’re the bigger bastard! I don’t know how many of those freaks there’s still lurking around, and besides it looks like you know your way around here. You’re probably my best chance to get out from here.”

She was still crying, trying not to and wiping tears from her face, smearing her eyes and cheeks with generous amount of blood from the sleeves of her shirt. He tried not to think too hard about the fact that it was his blood, and in a sense she was marking herself with it. His dick had gotten him in to trouble before. It was the biggest reason of him being in here. If he kept it in his pants for once, he’d probably have decent chance of getting out alive.
“Stop that fucking sniffling and slobbering and wipe your goddamned face!” He barked, perhaps more harshly than it was absolutely necessary and threw the girl a washrag that had gotten tangled to his right boot during his little escapade in the janitor’s closet. She made a face and a gagging noise, kicking the rag away.
“Okay. It was just a thought…” He huffed, turned sharply around and started walking fast forward to keep her out of his line of sight.

She could feel the blood on her face. Sticky layer of red goo with some snot and tears in the mix. Not a pleasant feeling, but she couldn’t bring herself to wipe it off with the rag he had thrown at her. If possible it was even more disgusting than the substance covering her skin. Old and tattered, odd hairs and dust sticking on it, foul smell of some kind of cleaning supplies wafting all over it. She wasn’t going to put it on her face, not matter how badly the blood sting her eyes.

She hurried after him when he started half walking, half running towards the end of the corridor. Was he trying to get rid of her? Good luck with that. She was going to stick with him until they got out of here. After that it would be good riddance for him. If it weren’t for the homicidal lunatics lurking around she wouldn’t even have to hitch a ride from only slightly less homicidal Wolverine.

“Hey, wait up!” He wasn’t listening. She was too tired to run. She’d have to make him slow down his pace somehow.
“Hey, ape-man! Wait for me!” No reaction whatsoever. He was still retreating with alarming pace. She’d lost him from her sights soon. Name rose to her mind unbidden from the depths of her murky memory.
“Logan, Wait!”

He stopped walking and whirled around, his left eyebrow hiked up.
“What did you say?” She jogged to where he stood and leaned against the wall, huffing out of breath.
“I asked you to wait for me… You walk too fast…”
“What did you call me?” She raised her gaze carefully from the toes of his boots to his face. Instead of angry grimace she met eyes filled with curiosity.
“Logan. Why?”
“My name’s Wolverine. Why did you call me Logan?”
“I don’t know. It just came to my mind…” An image of him, sitting on a plastic chair, telling her how he was here waiting for a friend. Her own voice asking how bad it was. Then it faded.

“I… I think I knew you. Well, not knew you, but I think I might have talked with you. Long time ago…” She stuttered. Wolverine grunted.
“I remember jack shit about what was before. They must have fried my brain before they gave me the ability to heal.” She nodded.
“They didn’t want us to remember anything. They kept me drugged for the same reason. Now that the drugs are wearing off, I’m starting to remember things. Bits and pieces, but more and more.”
“You remember being outside?” Wolverine asked, suspicion flaring in his eyes. She nodded.
“Not everything. I’m sure there are lots of things I still don’t remember, but I do remember some things. I can’t remember my name, or what I did, or how did I end up in here, but I keep getting these flashes… Like it’s all coming back…” Suspicion transformed to determination on Wolverine’s face.
“I’m keeping you. Once we get out you’ll stay with me until I get my head sorted out.”
“Keeping me? Wolverine…”
“Logan. Call me Logan. I like the way you say that name.”
“Logan. You can’t just keep me. I’m not a cat or a dog.”
“Shit. That did come out wrong…” Wolverine huffed and threw his gaze towards the ceiling. She could see his throat working furiously, then he turned to look at her again.
“I want you to stay with me. If you really remember what it’s like outside, I could really use your help.”

She could see from his face what an effort it had been to speak out loud those words. To admit that he needed somebody. To admit that perhaps he wasn’t the biggest bastard of them all. That even he could need help.
“I’ll make a deal with you. You get us out of here in one piece, and I’ll teach you what I know about the world outside. Okay?” She asked. Wolverine sighed and stuck out his hand. She stared at it for a moment before she realized what he wanted her to do. She grabbed his hand with her own, and they shook hands.
“We have a deal,” he said. She had to force herself to let go of his hand. Suddenly he didn’t seem all that crazy and homicidal anymore. Just another lost soul wandering down paths of this hell. Apparently missing more than one key components of his mental health she noticed when he suddenly grasped her hand to his own again and yanked hard, making her stumble down on her hands and knees at his feet.
“Get down.”

She was about to throw a snarky remark about his manners when bullets peppering the wall at their side made her squeak and hug the floor. Wolverine grunted, she could hear soft, wet thuds and him cursing.
“Oh, fucking Christ that hurts like a bitch! What does it take to kill those fuckers?” She raised her gaze. Wolverine was running towards a group of black clad men that were shooting at them. Most of the bullets were aimed at Wolverine, but few of them scraped dangerously close to her head.

He tried to block as many bullets as he could, put as much of himself on their way as it was possible. They hurt, but he’d heal. The girl was a bit trickier to put back together if she got hit, and he wasn’t going to loose his memory and life for yet another time. She’d tell him about the world. She’d teach him how to live. She’d tell him about himself if she had known him. But all those things required her to be alive to do them. Who knew, maybe she could come back from the dead even when her brain was splattered all over this dingy corridor, but he wasn’t going to take any risks. He would get them both out from here, but it would be up to her to keep them out. At least as long as it took from him to learn the ropes outside.

He unsheathed his claws, wincing from the pain, cursing when he noticed how much of his blood was coloring their silvery surface. There were limits. Certain limits his healing wasn’t able to overcome. He had learned it the hard way when they had tested him and pushed those limits, nearly killing him in the process. From the warm blood running down his arms and dripping on the floor he could tell he was closing those limits already. His body wouldn’t take much more before it would need some time to recover from what was done to it.

He realized his mistake when he got closer to the figures that were still firing at him and the girl. This wasn’t the team he had killed earlier. This was the first team he had encountered and left supposedly dead, their bodies pierced through several times. This time he was going to make sure that after they died they stayed dead. Instead of just stabbing them he lopped off their heads. Torsos fell to where they had stood, no silent guns rattling on the floor.

Air was wheezing in his lungs. He could feel the blood pooling inside of him. Wounds were closing, but nowhere near the earlier fevered pace. He leaned against the wall, trying to stay conscious. Coughed up bullets and soft bits and pieces he’d rather not know of what they were. He turned to look at the other end of the corridor and squinted his eyes. The girl was still on the floor, face down. Was she hit?
“Rogue…” He cleared his throat and spat out the blood, then called her again. This time she moved, sat up slowly, and he could see the blood coloring her back, and when she turned there was blood on her face and chest, it was everywhere. So much of it. She was hurt, she’d been hit, she’d die and there would be nobody to show him how to live.

He took few swaying steps to her direction. World tilted on its axis and he fell on the floor on his hands and knees. His claws were still out and blood was pooling around his palms and he should have put those back in but there was no time to do that, he’d have to get up and go to see if there was anything he could do but there was nothing left of him and he fell face down to the warm and sticky pool, redness around him deepening, darkening, until he could see only small bright spot somewhere far ahead, and she was walking in the light. Walking towards him on her own, then running and screaming. He could hear noises from somewhere behind him, but he was too tired to turn and look for their source. His eyelids felt like they weighed a ton. His every muscle and tendon were paralyzed. He couldn’t have moved even if he wanted to, and at the moment he couldn’t really muster up any urges to move to any direction.

He closed his eyes, and there was only darkness.

He came back to his senses. He was on his back, one hand awkwardly hung over his head and the ceiling was moving. It took him a while to put it all together. Ceiling wasn’t moving. He was moving. He was being dragged. Somebody was holding his hand and dragging him. He tried to struggle free from the grip. Nobody, absolutely nobody dragged him to anywhere when he was at this state. He was cold and tired, and he could tell from the stench of blood that he was still bleeding.

“Let go…” He rasped and tried to pull his hand away. His claws were still out and hard grip from around his wrist was chafing the blades against tissues inside of his wrist making them hurt and bleed.
“Let the fuck go of me!” He thought he was shouting. His voice should have been booming from the walls, filled with anger and authority, but he could hardly hear his squeaking himself.
“Shut up. I think they’re dead, but I’m not sure. I don’t want them to find us…” The girl. He would have laughed if the blood hadn’t glued his vocal cords, rendering them quite useless. Instead he coughed, trying to clear his throat.
“Will find anyway… Just follow the trail… I’m still bleeding, brainiac…” He forced the words out. And finally she stopped and let go of his hand. He stretched his protesting muscles and drew his claws back in their sheaths. Rolled on his side and turned to look at her.

“I snapped their necks, but I’m not sure if they can recover from that. I don’t have a knife. I tried to use your claws to decapitate them, but you’re too heavy to jostle around like that. I just left them there, I don’t have the slightest idea of where we are, and if you were planning to go all the way down to the janitorial level I may have screwed up that plan completely. Are you going to get better soon?” He closed his eyes and tried to comprehend everything she had just said.
“I already chopped off their heads…”
“Yes, you took care of the ones with the guns. But then you went down and there were more waiting. I had to take care of them.”
“I have no idea of where we were… Was just going to direction that felt right…”
“Have you been down here before?”
“I’m not sure… Might have… Where are we now?”
“I don’t know. I found a working elevator and pushed a button. They didn’t have numbers on those, just colors. I think it was blue. Might have been, because it looked a little like purple. Are you going to get better soon?”
“Blue… I have been here before… Hospital wing…”
“Are you going to get better soon?”
“I don’t know… You in a hurry?”
“No. Do you need anything? Like a blood transfusion or something? I don’t know about these things, but I could try…”
“No. I’ll be fine… I’ll be just fine… It’s just so goddamned cold…”

“Oh, shit… What… What are you doing…” She was jostling him. Turning him around, pushing and pulling and it hurt.
“You said you were cold. Come here. Maybe you’d be more comfortable… Lean back.” He did as she told. He could feel something soft behind his back. His jeans were soaked through from his blood and his ass was still freezing on the floor, but there was something warm and soft behind his back, around his sides and thighs. She was sitting behind him. Hands and legs cradling him. He let his head fall back on her shoulder and let his whole body relax.
“I’m too heavy… Just push me back to floor if…”
“It’s okay. Sleep. Get better. I’ll wake you if something happens, okay?” Her hand combed back tangled hair from his forehead. He closed his eyes.
“Don’t worry… We made a deal… I won’t bail out from it…”

He was heavy. All that weight bearing down on her, and for a moment she pondered whether she really should push him back on the floor. He’d heal. Then he shifted and his head turned, his face pressing against the side of her throat. She could more feel than hear contended murmur that left him from the contact. Instead of discarding him on to the floor she wrapped her hands around him tighter.

He wasn’t bleeding anymore, but his skin felt cold and clammy. Their clothes were soaked through from his blood and slowly drying to a rigid shell. They’d have to find some new clothes soon.

She heard a soft clink. It sounded like it came somewhere close. Too close for comfort. She craned her neck and tried to see the source of the noise. Corridor was silent. Nothing was moving in the shadows. Another clink. Something fell on her side. She picked it up. A bullet. With blood on it. Wolverine’s body was dispelling bullets still lodged inside of him. He grunted and shifted on her lap, even more small pieces of led falling from the ragged tears on his clothes. He’d be all right. She raised her hand and placed it on his forehead. His skin felt already warmer. More alive than dead. His breathing was evening out. Air was no longer rattling in his lungs.

“Shit… How long was I out?” He suddenly asked, shifting away from her and crawling up on his feet.
“Not long. Are you alright now?” She asked. He narrowed his eyes, then grimaced and coughed, spitting out yet another bullet.
“Yeah. Worried that you’d have to find your own way out?” He asked. She rose from the floor, stretching cramped muscles.
“A little… We aren’t going to get out like this, are we?” She asked. Wolverine shook his head.
“We have to find a map of some sort. Otherwise we end up walking in circles and getting our asses kicked to next week…”
“Correction. You get your ass kicked.”
“Fuck it. I can take anything they dish out. You can’t. And you have something I need. Have to get you out of here intact.”

She hid the sudden pang of disappointment. Yes. The deal. She’d share her memory with him, and he’d make sure they both got out of here. This was Wolverine. Not a guy you were supposed to develop tender feelings towards.
“A map. And fresh clothes would be nice…” She said, reaching for the nearest door.

Doors on this floor had only ordinary locks on them. She grabbed the handle and turned it, yanking the door open.
“Wait!” She heard Wolverine shouting, then a pair of hands curled around her and yanked her in to darkness. Door closed, and she was alone. Well, not completely alone. There was somebody with her, tearing off her clothes, panting and drooling, groping her from everywhere. She screamed and struggled. She could hear the door rattling on its hinges and Wolverine cursing a blue streak on the other side of it. Sharp teeth lodged on her collarbone and she fell on the floor, heavy weight of partly clothed sticky body pinning her down. Something hard was poking her thigh, and it took her a second to realize what it was. She renewed her struggles, but it was futile. Her attacker forced her thighs apart, and suddenly there was only pain. She was being torn open; somebody was at the same time chewing on her left breast, tearing off chunks of flesh. Her skin was on, but it was doing nothing. Nothing was happening. Strong fingers curled around her throat, sharp nails piercing her skin, and it became impossible to breathe or scream anymore.

There was a loud crash and suddenly the weight was torn off from her. She curled on her side, not caring what had happened. She was bleeding. Bleeding from so many places and hurting so badly she’d though it wouldn’t even be possible. She saw from the corner of his eye Wolverine, illuminated partly by the red emergency light of the corridor, dangling her attacker, bald and partly eaten fat man from his collar, teeth bared to voracious grimace, his fist pressed against the chubby underside of the baldy’s jaw. Baldy had stopped struggling and moving. She could see tips of Wolverine’s claws coming through his skull, like the baldy had suddenly grown three metal spikes from his skull.
“Nobody touches what’s mine…” She fell in to darkness.

“We should really stop dragging each other…” She muttered waking up from her back from a gurney that Wolverine was reeling after him as he went.
“I gave you enough to stop the bleeding. I’m sure as hell not going to touch you any more than it’s necessary.”
“I’m yours, huh?” She smirked, smacking her dry lips. Wolverine snorted.
“Yeah. You’re my memory, and I don’t fucking appreciate it when some walking stiff rapes it.”
“Walking stiff? I thought you said that they weren’t dead…”
“This one was. That’s why I couldn’t smell it before it was too late.”
“And that’s why my skin didn’t work… I tried… I tried to stop it, but it just kept going and… And…”
“Stop your blubbering. It happened. I took care of that bastard, you got your boob back and I don’t think there’s any internal damage anymore.”
“Internal damage?”
“Fucker tore you up pretty good. But I gave you enough to fix it. Couldn’t really check you up since your skin was on, but you’re not bleeding anymore.”
“Check me up?”
“Wasn’t going to stick my paw in to you when there were no guarantees that I would have recovered from it.”
“Oh…” She’d thought that there was not enough blood left in her, but she could feel the blush spreading over her cheeks from the mental image of Wolverine kneeling between her parted legs. When her demented imagination added surgical gloves and stirrups that kept her feet apart a giggle escaped from her lips. Wolverine glanced over his shoulder, his brows knitting together.
“What the fuck are you laughing about?”
“Nothing… Nothing at all…” She giggled some more, then suddenly her giggles turned on to sobs. Wolverine just grunted and kept walking, letting her cry in peace.

He was still fuming from the sight that had greeted him when he had finally managed to shoulder open the door. The girl on the floor, drooling carcass writhing and squirming between her thighs, its waxy buttocks bobbing up and down while it ate her breasts. He let out a breathy growl, claws forcing their way out involuntarily. He wanted… He needed to sink them in to something. Anything to clear off the haze of rage from his mind. He was no good to anybody in this condition. He’d have to focus and find a goddamned map, and preferably some sort of universal key for every door and elevator there was in this beehive.

The girl kept crying. He let her. He’d probably be screaming his lungs out right now if it were him at her place. She was actually pretty decent crier. None of that civilized sniffling crap with box of tissues involved, but full-blown tears, screams and snot that came from rage rather than sorrow. Good for her. Better just get it all out of her system now. He’d need her sober and coherent once they got out of here.

When he spotted a sturdy looking column sticking partly out of wall he let go of the gurney and sunk his claws to it with satisfied growl. Solid concrete that screeched against the metal, crumbling under his knuckles, flaying the skin and baring glinting metal from underneath. Pain from it brought back his focus, and he could actually think past the claws and how good it would feel to sink them in to something living and feel the soft slide of tissue and the heart as it started to slow down.

When he turned back to grab the gurney again he met her eyes. She’d stopped crying.
“Better?” She asked. He shrugged his shoulders and cracked his neck.
“Almost. You?”
“Almost. I think I can walk. Lets go and find that fucking map.”
“Do lets.”

They found it from a small hall. Hidden under nurse’s desk. Nurse stationed at the desk had probably been new in here. Map was hand-made, quite badly drawn, but it gave out the basic layout of the facility. And revealed quite an interesting fact. He had been going to right direction all along. There was an air conditioning shaft that started from the janitorial level, climbing the side of the building, all the way up to the ground level. There would undoubtedly be several obstacles in that shaft, but it was their best and only chance of getting out.

There were five floors separating them from the janitorial level. Five floors and god knew what hiding in each of those levels. And the keycard she had used to get in here wasn’t working on any of the elevators they tried anymore. It had gotten scratched and bent during their little tumble with the dead doctor. And for some reason the architect responsible for the design of this facility had seen it fit to place stairs at opposite sides of the building, rather than add two whole staircases on both sides. They’d have to find a new keycard or go through all five levels. And he just knew he wasn’t up to it. If those five levels were anything like they had seen up until now he’d be torn up after first two, and they could kiss their asses good bye at the third.

“We’ll find a key,” the girl said when he told her about their little dilemma. Then took his hands that weren’t still quite healed from his little lapse of sanity with the support column. His wrists and forearms were dark and swollen, as were his palms as well. Ragged holes on his knuckles and cleanly sliced wounds between them were bleeding sluggishly clear liquid with some clotted blood coloring it. His healing had already been impaired; he really hadn’t had any extra to borrow when he had touched her to let her heal from the damage the dead doctor had dealt upon her. It had been sheer stupidity from his part to pulverize that column afterwards.

“Is there anything we can do?” She asked, stroking his arms gently, her fingers barely touching his skin. He suppressed a shiver.
“Nothing much. We could wait. But if we don’t find that key… They put me through some scenarios. My body can take only so much before it stops healing. After that it’s toss and go which one will do me in first; blood loss or poisoning.”
“Poisoning?” She asked.
“This shit they put in to me… Adamantium. Yeah, that it was… It’s toxic. Durable as hell, they still haven’t found anything that would break it, but put a rat in to a cage made out of it and it’s dead in five minutes.”

He had no idea of what made him share that with her. He had no reason to trust her. Nor had she to raise his fists and kiss his still bleeding knuckles, but that she did.
“I don’t want you to touch me anymore. I have already taken too much from you,” she whispered. He yanked his hands from her grip, stuffing them in to pockets of his jeans.
“If you’re going to die, I’m going to touch you. I need you. Your memories and stuff. I’m not stupid. In here I may be the meanest fucker there is, but out there… It’s another ballgame. You know the rules to it, I don’t.” She looked like she was about to say something.
“I’ll keep you alive, but cross me, and that’s going to change. What I did to that bastard earlier is going to look like a pat on the head compared to what happens to you if you try to sneak around behind my back.”
“I could say the same to you. Try anything and I’ll suck you dry. And not in a good way…” She snarled, her eyes narrowing. He nodded.
“Fair enough. Lets find that fucking key and get the fuck out of here.”
“And some fresh clothes… These pants are chafing already…” She said grimacing and picking the rigid crotch of the pants Logan had somehow wrestled back on her while she had been unconscious.
“I’m not going to kiss it better. Take them off, I’m sure we’ll find something for you to wear soon enough.”
“Uhh…” She blushed furiously.
“Take them off. It’s not like I haven’t seen you naked before.”

Naked, skin smeared with blood and other bodily fluids, like some sort of perverse war paint. He could see his own handprints on her both thighs, now dry and flaking off when she moved. More handprints on her stomach and sides, as well as around her throat. And those were not his. He swallowed the growl before it made its way out from his throat.

“I need a shower…” She hissed, trying to rub off layer of grime and dirt. And suddenly he was itching all over, his whole body feeling sticky, taut and sore.
“We both need a shower. And I think we just got lucky…” He grunted slicing a lock from a door labeled ‘locker room’.

Row after row plain grey steel lockers. He started prying them open. Several of them were empty, but then he hit a jackpot. Two lockers, side by side. One seemed to belong to a woman, the other for a man. When the girl reached over his shoulder towards clothes that hung in the locker he swatted her hand away.
“Tut-tut… Shower first…”

He stalked in to the shower room. It was empty. No doctors, living or dead variety in there.
“You’ll go first. I’ll wait out here and keep watch. Don’t take too long.” She shook her head and dashed in to nearest stall, and he could hear water gushing down, splattering on to her skin and from there down to tiled floor. He closed his eyes and leaned against locker behind his back. He was quite sure that none of the scenarios they had taught him had had anything about taking a shower in a middle of fucking operation. But her sudden desire for cleanliness was actually a good idea. It would be easier for him to detect possible threats when ripe scent of their own blood wasn’t blocking his senses.

“Your turn,” he heard her whispering and felt her stepping over him, droplets of water falling on him. He opened his eyes and let his gaze roam over her body. Curves and muscles in all the right places. Creamy skin. Long, brown hair falling down over her back. He dragged himself up from the floor and shuffled in to shower when his cock started to show signs of life. Not a good idea. Not the time or place to start drooling after her. He knew he wouldn’t be able to concentrate anything else but her if he stuck his cock in to that warm body of hers.

He tore of chafing armor of blood and cloth and stepped under the shower. Water was only lukewarm, and coupled with the excess heat his regenerative ability created it felt freezing, but he stood stubbornly under the spray, scrubbing off traces of his kills from his skin.

When he couldn’t smell blood anymore he turned his attention to his cock. It had taken rising interest to the fact that there was a fuckable female in the next room. Even the cold water pelting down on him didn’t have any power over it. He shut off the water and cursed his overactive libido before patting back in to the locker room.

The girl had already gotten dressed and was sitting on a bench in front of the lockers, facing the closed door that led to the corridor. Her whole posture screamed of attention and alertness. She was taking her watch seriously.

He noted slightly amused that she had finally found some clothes that fit. Pair of black jeans that hugged her hips and shapely legs like a second skin, and long-sleeved white shirt that looked like it was tailored for her.
“Cut off sleeves from that shirt and jeans.” She let her gaze flicker briefly over him upon his command and nodded.
“I thought about it, but I wasn’t sure if you’d like that…” She said picking up a pair of scissors that lay next to her on the bench and started clipping off parts from her clothes.
“Just don’t get too close to me when your skin is on and it’s just fine.”

He couldn’t deny that his command to reveal more of her body had most likely more to do with his basic urge to throw her down and fuck her senseless rather than anything else, but it gave her more protection from their living opponents. They couldn’t grab her that easily.

“I found this when I was looking for these scissors,” she said, waving a small plastic rectangular in the air. A keycard. Finally something was working as it should.
“Good. What about the codes?” He asked, pulling on jeans and a shirt he had found from the locker. They were a tight fit, jeans even tighter because of his almost painful erection, but he managed to tuck himself in relatively comfortably. She pulled out a small notebook.
“I can’t believe how stupid these people were. What good are all these locks and codes when anybody can get their hands on them?” She huffed, grinning from ear to ear. He grunted.
“Their loss, our gain. Ready to go?” He asked, stifling quite unmanly whimper when she stood up and twirled around.

She had cut her jeans high from her thighs, and currently they reminded more underpants than trousers. White shirt was sleeveless and tied under her breasts to reveal as much skin as possible. She had gathered her long hair to a messy bun on top of her head, and few tendrils had escaped, hanging loosely around her face. If she had replaced the blood soaked sneakers with knee-high boots nobody would have looked her twice out on the streets.
“I guess we’re ready…” He grunted, tearing his gaze off from her breasts and reached for the door handle. Her hand landed on his arm and he froze.
“We’re not ready yet.”

“I figured that it would feel better that way. As long as your hands are still healing,” she explained. Wolverine was stretching his fingers, squeezing them in to fists and curling them open. She had tied several rolls of gauze around his both palms, wrists and forearms. She had bandaged them tightly to lower the swelling. Wolverine nodded and twisted his wrists experimentally.
“It is better. Good idea to leave the knuckles bare. Won’t shred the bandages if I need my claws.”
“I don’t want you to use them anymore. Not before you’re healing properly.”
“You a doctor?” Wolverine asked, his left eyebrow quirked in a questioning manner.
“Fine! Do as you like! I was just thinking that it would be pretty stupid from you to bleed to death when we’re this close of getting out!”
“What ever… Lets get going. We have already wasted enough time. You know, these partly chopped and chewed up schmucks we keep running in to aren’t our only problem. They have probably sent more teams after us already,” Wolverine said.

She hadn’t even thought about it. She had been just happy that they had gotten rid of the first two teams. Of course they would send in more people. As many as it took to capture them. Or capture Wolverine. They hadn’t seemed to be all that interested about her. She hurried after him when he opened the door and strode out.

It didn’t take them long to find a working elevator that would take them all the way down to janitorial level. And if the map were correct, the air ventilation shaft wouldn’t be far from the elevator. Couple of hundred meter down the corridor, and they’d be standing right next to it.
“Here goes nothing…” Wolverine grunted, punching the button that closed the car and started their descent. Lights of the elevator flickered on briefly and it shuddered as if it was going to stop at any given second. Wouldn’t it be a joke of the century? To get trapped in to an elevator of all the possible cool demises this place had to offer?
“Don’t worry. If this thing breaks down, it’ll probably just fall all the way down. You might break a few bones if that happens, but I’ll fix you up. Have to keep you mobile,” Wolverine promised as if he had read her mind. She didn’t know which should have worried her the most. The easy tone of his voice when he promised to touch her to heal her broken bones, or the feel of calm acceptance that washed over her. Of course he’d let her drain him if something happened.

Nothing happened, but as they were approaching their destination Wolverine raised his head and took a whiff, his nostrils flaring. He grabbed her shoulders and moved her in front of him.
“Turn your skin on when the door opens. There’s at least three alive one waiting for us. You take care of them. If there’s any dead ones, I’ll take those.”
“Aren’t you the gentleman…” She muttered. She heard Wolverine snorting behind her and he let go of her shoulders, backing away few steps.
“Gentleman? Hardly. Just calculating the odds…”
“Calculating? And what’s the end result of your calculations?”
“Possibility to get out of here alive for you about 100 percent. Give or take few notches.”
“What about you?” She asked, but he didn’t have the time to answer when the car stopped and the doors slid open, and the elevator was suddenly packed to the brim with growling and drooling people who were tearing in to her, tearing in to him and tearing in to each other in their haste and yearning for fresh meat.
“Change of plans! This is where you get out!” She heard Wolverine growling. He shoved something down in to her jeans, then she felt hands on her upper back and she got pushed out of the elevator just before the doors closed and the car started to rise again.

She attacked against the cool metal doors, pounding them with her fists until her knuckles bled.
“What about you!” Her scream echoed in the empty and dimly lit corridor. She slid on the floor and felt something hard under her buttocks. Reached in to her tight jeans and pulled out the map, keycard and the notebook with codes written on it. She unfolded the map with shaking fingers and smoothed it on the floor. The way out was drawn on to it with black marker. Clear, dark line stretching along the corridor, turning behind one corner, and there it would be. Smack dab at the middle of the facility’s east wall. Little over one meter wide, five hundred meter high shaft. Just crawl through it, and she’d be free.

She folded the map fast when she heard the elevator starting again. Car was returning. But who was in it? Wolverine? The blood crazed pack of doctors? Or yet another clean-up crew armed to teeth, ready to wipe her from existence?

She backed from the door, pushing the map, notebook and the keycard in to her jeans again. Ready to run, but still waiting. If luck were on her side, it’d be wolverine coming through that door. If it wasn’t, it was time to scream and run.

The elevator stopped, and it felt like eternity, just to stand there and wait for the door to open. When it slid open with a soft ping she let out the breath she had been holding and hurled forward, pounding her fists against wall of solid muscle.
“You bastard! You fucking bastard! Don’t ever… Never pull a stunt like that again! You hear me? Huh?” Wolverine growled and grasped her wrists, shoving her away from him and stepped out of the elevator just before the doors closed and it started to rise again. He unsheathed claws from his right hand and plunged them through the control panel next to the elevator, taking it out of commission for good.
“Took those bastards to the first level. Thought the clean-up crew up there could use some company…” He sheathed his claws and flicked off droplets of blood that clung to his knuckles. He was bruised and bleeding from small gashes and bite marks, but he looked more pissed off than really hurt.
“Why didn’t you say something?”
“Like what?”
“Well, I don’t know… Wait for me?” She huffed.
“And why the fuck would I have done that? I didn’t know if I was coming back.”

He started walking down the corridor, and for a moment she could just stare after him, completely flabbergasted. He hadn’t known if he was coming back?

“It should be here.”
“Well, where is it?” The girl asked. He knocked the wall, and heard a faint echo from the other side of it.
“It’s here. We have to go through half meter of concrete first.”
“What?”
“Well… What the hell did you expect? It’s the only vulnerable spot on this whole goddamned fortress. Makes only sense that they hid it like this.”
“But how are we going to… Stop!”

He quirked an annoyed eyebrow at her when she grabbed his wrist.
“Unless you have a power drill I have to use my claws,” he pointed out the obvious.
“But what if you loose too much blood before we get through?”
“Jesus Christ… I’m not about to camp out down here and wait that my healing kicks in again. Longer we wait the more time it gives for the clean-up team to find us!” He shouted, shrugged her hands off and let his claws rip forth, plunging them in to concrete.

Few moments later he was swaying on his feet on a pile of blood smeared rubble, staring in to opening that was just wide enough for the girl to fit through. He had sheathed his claws and was tearing in to the wall with his hands, trying to dislodge large slab of stone that sat stubbornly on his way. He kicked the slab and slouched backwards, flicking off strands of hair that hung over his forehead and tickled his eyes. He was covered to sweat and dust from head to toe. Small breeze coming from the open shaft in front of him made him shiver as it slid over his skin, drying off droplets of sweat that had broken through the mask of concrete dust.

“Climb in. I’ll follow you as soon as I fit through,” he grunted after clearing his throat. The girl stared at the bent steel rods sticking out from the wall. He had cut them as short as he could. He still needed them for leverage when he pried off the lower part of the wall that stood on his way.
“No.”
“No?”
“I’ll wait for you.” He shrugged his shoulders.
“Suit yourself…”

He grabbed the wall again and cursed when the concrete started to give away under his fingers, crumbling to a dust. He wasn’t getting anywhere like this. He leaned against the slab that kept rocking back and forth, but refused to fall down and craned his neck. He could see only darkness. But he could hear the sound of rotors somewhere up ahead and realized that the girl had been right to wait for him. He’d have to take the lead when they started to climb towards the freedom. There were rotors and nets he’d have to cut through.

He kicked the slab once more, then slid against the opposite wall, sliding down until he felt the cool floor under his buttocks. He combed his fingers through his matted and tangled hair, letting out a frustrated growl.
“What if I climbed in and pushed from that side while you pull from this side?” The girl asked. He shook his head.
“If it coils back for some reason, you’d be squashed like a fucking bug under it. I didn’t drag you all the way through that hell just to let you drop dead now.”
“I could tell you everything I remember before we try it.”
“As tempting as it sounds, no. We made a deal. I get you out of here, and you give me what I need. It’s not just memories I’m after. I need you to show me how to deal with things. I’m quite sure that the appropriate way to react when something happens isn’t to flash my claws and cut up anybody within my range.”
“It’s worked pretty well down here, but as far as I recall, it’s not a good idea up there…” She chuckled.
“Yeah. That’s why I need you…” He grunted, pushing himself up again, eyeing the wall menacingly.

He unsheathed his claws, grimacing for the amount of blood that gushed through the slits they made and sliced them cleanly through the slab, cutting it half from the middle, and fell on his knees in front of it, claws screeching back in. He leaned forward, resting his face against his palms, and tried to ward off the dizziness and shooting stars that had blurred his field of vision.

He heard the girl scramble past him. Stone creaking against steel. Rubble was moving, falling on his knees and bouncing off.
“Help me…” He opened his eyes and lunged forward, grabbing the side of the slab when the girl had gotten it bent as far as her strength allowed. He pulled it for the last stretches, and suddenly the steel gave away, letting the stone fall, and the hole on the wall got considerable wider. At the same time they could hear the soft ping of an elevator from the distance, followed by doors opening and hushed whispers. He could see her eyes widening. He raised a finger over his lips to indicate that it was important to stay quiet. She nodded. He rose from the rubble slowly.

“I’ll go and take care of them. Can’t go in that shaft now. We’ll be sitting ducks if they start shooting at us in there…” He whispered, his lips nearly grazing her earlobe. Again she nodded. He turned to leave when her hand landed on his forearm. He turned to look at her. There was a question in her eyes. He felt his lips curl to a something that reminded a smile.
“Wait for me.”

“Wait for me.” He mouthed the words soundlessly, but it was far better than just leaving her standing there, not knowing what to do. She crept in to the hole they had dug on the wall. It wouldn’t hide her if they came looking for her, but if the corridor turned yet another shooting range at least she’d be out of the way.

Wait for me. And it had been a smile. An honest smile. The first she had gotten out of him during the whole time they had spent together. She couldn’t help the warm feeling that grew inside of her. He was twisted. Broken in so many ways she couldn’t even comprehend. Gruff and mean, looking after mostly himself, but that had started to change already. He had done things he didn’t necessarily need to do. What would happen once they got out from here? Would he learn how to live? Would he leave her after he knew how to react, how to behave?

She snorted. Would he leave her? What on earth was she thinking? They had made a deal. It was the only reason he had dragged her sorry ass through all this. That was the only reason she stood here waiting for his return, her heart hammering at her temples, because she was so close of being free, but she still needed him to get through the last stretches of her imprisonment. Rotors that forced the air to the smaller shafts that circulated the building were probably huge. Able to cut her in half. She’d need him and his claws to get through the shaft alive.

When she heard footsteps approaching her hiding place she tensed. Tried not to move. Tried not to breathe. When masked face of a soldier appeared in front of her she screamed. Barrel of the gun that had been pointing at her was suddenly wrenched aside, and she could see three sharp blades coming through the chest of the man that was standing in front of her. Black clad body was tossed to the side, and Wolverine stood there. She launched from the hole and wrapped her whole body around him, her hands around his neck, legs around his waist and held on as if her life depended on it. She felt him tensing, but his hands curled around her as well. He held her for a moment, then struggled loose and lowered her on the floor, clearing his throat awkwardly.

“They won’t bother us anymore. Time to get moving. I’ll go first. Keep some distance between us. I don’t want to drop you if I start to fall.” He ducked in to the hole, then turned around and backed out.
“Try to leave so free space between your legs. I have to cut loose some parts and it’s easier to let them fall than try to push them up with us.” With that said he disappeared in to the shaft. She waited for a moment, then climbed after him. It was pitch black, but she could hear him breathing somewhere above her. Metal screeching against metal.
“Watch it. Coming through…” He warned her and she could feel something cold and hard brushing past her shins. She braced her feet apart little wider, and pushed upwards with her hands, blinking off dust that rained down on her and got in to her eyes.

They had gotten past three rotors and as many nets when she felt it. First wet droplet on her face.
“Logan?” She asked.
“Yeah?” Tone of his voice was wary, he was obviously surprised from her using his ‘real’ name.
“Are you alright?” She asked.
“I’m fine. Except that I’m getting wet. It’s probably raining outside.”
“We’re getting pretty close then. Aren’t those nets there to gather rubbish and moisture?” She asked. Wolverine grunted.
“Probably. Can’t see a thing yet. It’s raining, and it’s night. Isn’t that some sort of cliché?” He asked.
“Cliché? Yes. Definitely. Only thing missing are howling bloodhounds on our trail, and we have a nice little prison escape movie in our hands…” She giggled.
“Shit…”
“What is it?”
“Nothing. Nothing. A movie? I think… I think I have seen few of those. Watch it.”

She moved a bit and he dropped yet another rotor past her. She heard him shuffling upwards and followed him.
“Oops…” He started to slide down. She could only watch his approaching back, then she heard him unsheathing his claws and he plunged them in to the wall, stopping his descent. She could feel the warmth radiating from him. She could smell the blood that was running down his arms. She could feel him hovering above her in the darkness, every muscle and tendon trembling from exertion.
“Shit…”
“What do we do now?” She asked.
“Can you get past me? That was the last rotor I just cut off. Should be a clear way from now on.”
“What about you?” She asked. She held no illusions. If she stayed where she was and he fell, she couldn’t stop the fall.
“I can use my claws to climb up, but I don’t want to kick you in the face while doing that. Try to climb over me. And fucking fast. I don’t know how long I can stay this way…”

It took a bit creative thinking and lots of squirming and screaming from her part, and use of unidentified curses from his part, but finally they managed to trade places. His claws were buried deep in to the wall and she was sitting atop of his palms, trying to find sturdy footing from the wall above and started inching slowly upwards. She gasped when she turned to look up. She could see the stars above. Bright, shining lights above her, inviting her to the outside. She kept her eyes locked to them and used the pull she imagined as a leverage and source of strength. She was going to get free. She heart Wolverine below her, claws scraping and screeching against the metal wall of the shaft, seeking purchase.

She reached the brim of the shaft, and for a moment panic gripped her insides. She had been climbing face up. How was she going to get over the brim? Then she felt Wolverine’s head between her shoulderblades. He gave her the push she needed, and suddenly she was falling. Fall wasn’t high, just few meters, and she fell to a soft grass on her back. Wolverine climbed out after her, standing on the brim of the air ventilation shaft for a moment, his chest heaving, eyes closed and face turned upwards to the sky. Then his head swiveled sharply around and he turned to look at her.
“Turn on your skin. Now.” She did as he told her to do.
“Stay down. Don’t move.” She could hear angry growling from somewhere close by.
“Don’t say a word. Don’t even fucking breathe…” Wolverine murmured, then leaped down from the shaft. Angry bark, more of a howl echoed from somewhere behind her head, and a dark figure leaped over her. A dog. A huge dog. A huge, dead dog.

Something else had gotten out with them. Something dark and sinister hidden in to their genes. Every time they spoke, every time they moved, every time they even breathed they released a deadly cloud of madness and insanity around them, tainting everybody and everything, spreading infection.

He didn’t want to know about what was before. She didn’t want to remember what was before. But they stayed together. It was safer that way. Somewhere in the deepest bowels of the hell they had escaped they had ignited a spark of trust towards each other.