Read Logan Trilogy for Free Online Page B

you—where?
    And the girl, Jessica? How would he deal with her?
    The car slowed, hissed to a stop. The hatch opened.
    Jessica didn't move. "They can change the color of a man's eyes but they can't change the man inside.
    You're not my brother."
    "He's dead," Logan told her.
    The girl's mouth tightened. "You killed him."
    "No—but I saw him die. He gave me his key. He—wanted me to have it."
    For a moment her face was still; then she began to sob quietly.
     
    What do you say? How do you say I'm sorry? A Sandman doesn't feel sorry. He does what he has to.
    "Look," he said. "Your brother's dead and we're alive. And if we want to stay alive we'll have to keep moving. It's just that simple."
    "Exit, please," said the car.
    They stepped out and the machine whipped away.
    The maze platform was lifeless. Dusty yellow sunlight speared down from a jagged hole in the tunnel ceiling. Loose metal tiles lay in disordered heaps where they had sloughed from the walls. Exposed masonry jutted through cracked anodized flooring.
    On the rusting section of tunnel wall a weathered poster clung, edges peeling. On it a running silhouette was overprinted with harsh letters: SHAME. Directly under this a vandal had chalked RUNNERS STINK!
    A bent sign angled over the platform: CATHEDRAL.
    And what now? Logan asked himself. Is this Sanctuary? A shorted-out section of city swarming with renegade cubs…
    "Listen!" Jess warned.
    A distant singing. A faint rising and falling refrain, echoing from an upper level.
    Logan ducked Jess into a wedge of shadow. They waited.
    Faintly:  Sandman, Sandman,
    leave my door.
    Don't come back here
    any more .
    A high, childish treble, coming closer.
    "Cubs!" said Logan. His eyes strained the darkness.
    Louder:   Now I lay me
    down to pray.
     
    Sandman, Sandman,
    stay away …
    A small figure in a tattered blue garment walked into the circle of sun on the platform. A little girl of five. She was dragging something behind her. The child's face was grimed and hair-tangled; her scabbed legs were thin. She wore no shoes.
    She stopped singing. "Don't be afraid," she said. "I'm Mary-Mary 2."
    Logan stepped from the shadow. "What are you doing here?"
    "Oh, he told me to meet you."
    "Who did?"
    The little girl's eyes saucered. "Why, the old, old man, of course."
    Jessica gripped the child's shoulder. "What old, old man?"
    "His hair is black and white, all mixed together," she told them. "And he has deep places in his face and he looks so wise. He's the oldest man in the world."
    "Ballard!"
    The little girl took a silver key from a torn pocket. "He told me to give you this."
    Logan palmed the key. "Do we use it now?"
    "This many," she said solemnly, raising her tiny hands, all ten fingers spread. In the center of her right palm a yellow flower glowed softly.
    "Ten o'clock," said Jess.
    Logan checked a wallchron above them. "Twelve minutes."
    Jessica looked deeply into the waif's eyes. "Where do you live, Mary-Mary?"
    She smiled. "Here," she said.
    "Why aren't you in a nursery?"
    "I'm very smart," said Mary-Mary.
     
    "But don't you get hungry?"
    "You can catch things to eat."
    She opened the frayed cloth bag at her feet and proudly held out an old-fashioned rat trap. Jessica paled.
    "I never go upstairs," continued Mary-Mary. "The bad people are there and they chase you. Goodbye now! You're a nice old lady."
    The child looked disdainfully at Logan and walked off into the tunnels.
    "I don't think she likes me," he said.
    "She shouldn't be here," said Jess. "Alone in a place like this. She should be in a nursery with other children."
    "She seems to be self-sufficient."
    "A nursery would protect her."
    "As it protected you?"
    "Of course. No child under seven belongs on her own. I was happy in the nursery." Jess sat down on the platform edge with Logan. "No, no I wasn't happy." Her voice trembled. "I accepted everything then, without questioning but I was never happy there."
    Logan let the girl talk; he wanted to know more about