LOGAN:

'My name is Logan, and I am unequivocally fucked.'

“This doesn’t look like a prison cell.”

“Would you know what one looks like? Been in there often?” The girl matched my smirk, although mine had become forced. I was screwed, in short. I had been arrested for whatever reason and then had tried to kill a police officer. I don’t think, even if I had my memories, I would be able to recall a time where I had been anymore screwed than I had been right then.

The man elbowed her in the side. “Leave him alone, you’re going to scare him.”

“I’m not scared.” I scoffed.

“No, but you are cocky. Come on, he needs knocked down a peg or two.”

“You already knocked me down ‘a peg or two’ if I recall correctly,” I argued. “What’s going on, what the hell am I doing there?”

“You’re safe, you’re not in a prison cell.” The scientist explained as I withheld my sigh of relief. “You’re in a sanctuary, designed and established for people gifted with supernatural abilities such as yourself. We kept an eye on you after you’d been released so that we could bring you back here.”

My eyes narrowed. “Released from where?”

“Look, Logan, you’re going to want to take a seat-”

“How the hell do you know my name?”

Erica nodded at the bar-code stamped across my wrist as I shielded my arm away from the pair. She held up her own arm so that I could see her wrist, Brian doing the same so that I could see that they had similar tattoos to mine. “We looked you up in the system when you were out.”

“You…you scanned me?”

“Yes, we were able to find you in Castaneda’s files. Lovely little mugshot you had to go along with it.”

My head spun as I leaned my weight against the wall, struggling to process all that they were throwing at me. Castaneda? Files? They scanned me in like a pint of milk at the convenience store?

“As I said, you might want to sit down.” Erica kicked the chair towards me and I collapsed into it. It occurred to me that the pair hadn’t moved from standing in front of the door, instead maintaining a constant vigilance as they watched me with the eyes of a hawk.

“You’re going to have to run through all of this, much more slowly.” I groaned, putting my head in my hands. My brain bounced around in my skull as my head pounded. I felt as if it were ready to explode. “Why can’t I remember anything?”

“We’ll start from the beginning. When you were a kid, like many others, Castaneda noticed your ability and decided to take you to his lab for testing. Exactly what for, we don’t know. We think he might be trying to find the exact origin of these abilities, or he is attempting to eradicate them. His true intentions are a mystery.”

“And Castaneda is?”

Erica stood forward this time as if the pair had rehearsed this exact conversation beforehand. Or had had it many, many times. “Doctor Vance Castaneda, an outcast in his field of Neurobiology for his ridiculous practices, he disappeared off of the radar without a trace. Then, kids started disappearing. Only thing is, the people who knew them had absolutely no memory of them existing in the first place, so authorities have never gotten involved.”

“How do you know for sure then-”

“Cause, genius, we are those missing kids.”

I leaned back in my chair, trying my best to look nonchalant but inside my mind was reeling. Nothing was making any sense, but I knew in some way that it all had to be true because I was the only one who had set fire to that clearing.

The scientist coughed after a moment of silence. “Anyways, he keeps the kids for a couple of years, conducting experiments until they were practically on the edge of death before he wipes their memories and sets them free.”

“Why wipe their memories?”

“Because he’s a paranoid asshole.” Erica scoffed. “If we remembered everything, we could report him and he’d be investigated for his practices. Or we’d be able to gather a team and storm his lab, but he’s all nice and safe since we can’t remember jack squat.”

“Stick to the script.”

“Give me a break, Brian.”

“So you’re telling me…that I’m stuck in a sanctuary for freaks and rejects?” I asked. Both Brian and Erica tensed, silent as they stared me down, but it couldn’t be denied that what I said had been accurate.

“None of us are normal or average. We can each do things that a human normally shouldn’t be able to. It’s something in our DNA, our genetic makeup, that sets us apart from any Tom, Dick, or Harry. By textbook definition, I’d say that we are anomalies, not freaks.” Brian explained, treading over word carefully as it left his mouth.

“Meaning we shouldn’t exist and are perfect products for experimentation. We are the creme de la creme of lab rats.”

“Wow, thank you, that really puts everything into perspective.” I rolled my eyes. I could accept being called a pyromaniac, but a lab rat? Nope.

“Maybe this will help then.” Erica leaned one hand on the table, staring me dead in the eye. “Be happy that you’re here, because not everyone makes it out, or worse yet, not all survive the first year.”

“And you had to tell him that why?” Brian hissed, swiping Erica’s hand out from underneath her so that she stumbled forward.

“He needed to know.”

“No, he didn’t.”

“The arguing is all well and good, quite entertaining, really.” I sighed, standing to my feet. “But since I’m not going to prison, I’m going to leave.”

The pair grouped closer together at the door as I took a step forward. Brian coughed. “That’s the thing, you can’t.”

“But, I wasn’t really arrested. That wasn’t a real cop, nothing is keeping me here.” I wasn’t positive that all I was saying was true, but I was still going to go with it.

“You got lucky with that one, really. Grayson is in the infirmary at the minute and he still hasn’t talked to anyone. But no, you still can’t leave. We can’t let you go until you’re of age.”

“You’re not being serious.” I looked between the pair, hoping to see some sort of sign that this was all a big joke, but found none. “You can’t keep me here!”

I felt heat in my hands as flames licked up my fingers.

Brian looked between my hands and my face, sweat beading on his forehead. “Once we bring you back here, we are obligated to look after you until you turn eighteen. We offer school facilities so that you can live about as close to the average teenager as possible, and then you can choose to either stay or leave.”

“I might as well be in a prison cell if you’re going to keep me here against my will,” I growled, ready to bang my head against the wall.

Erica shrugged her shoulders, but that only irked me more. “Consider it a prison if you want. You will be fed and clothed, given a room to stay in, and you have classes to attend every day. Sounds more like a boarding school than a prison.”

“A boarding school doesn’t exactly appeal to me either.”

“Somehow, I think you’d say that either way,” Erica smirked.

“Is there seriously no way out?”

“Oh, there is, but you won’t be leaving through it.”

I paced around the room, suddenly feeling a lot more like a caged animal at the news. I wished that they would just move me somewhere else, as the walls appeared as if they were starting to close in.

“Stop teasing him.” Brian shushed her, stepping forward with his clipboard clutched so tightly in his arms that there was a high chance he’d break it. “For the time being, we’re you’re guardians. This isn’t an unpleasant place to spend a few months, you can leave on your birthday if you want.”

“Wait, do you even know when that is?”

Erica shook her head. “We measure it from when kids arrive here or see if they remember it. Happy birthday, kid.”

“Haha, very funny.” I rolled my eyes. “I could not possibly be laughing more right now. I might bust a gut. Please, bring the doctors in before you have to pick up my entrails from the floor. It could get messy.”

Erica snorted, whilst Brian just looked at me as if I had a few screws loose. There was a possibility that I wasn’t completely right in the head, but I hadn’t been myself for long enough to judge that just yet.

Even just thinking about that gave me a headache. How could I forget seventeen years?

“How do you know for sure that I’m seventeen?”

“That’s what it said in your file, there was no birth date attached to it. It was the ‘age of release’.”

“Most kids who turn up here are around thirteen or fourteen, so you’re late to the party.” Erica elaborated.

"So you’re keeping me here for a year? For what? How exactly is a year here supposed to prepare me to go out into a world that I’ve never even seen before? You’re crazy.” I shook my head, struggling to come to terms with the fact that I was effectively housebound for the next year of my life. I wouldn’t let them keep me here against my will, I couldn’t.

Brian sighed. “At least give us a few days. You’ll like what we have here, and what we can do for you.”

“You can’t do anything for me.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure of that.”

I gritted my teeth, seething. The fire had now crawled up my forearms, tickling my skin as I concentrated, trying to make it go away.

I crossed my fingers behind my back, glaring at the pair in front of me as they waited for my response. “Fine, but I make no promises.”

The second I find the way they brought me in here, I’m gone.