"Not mind control." For the first time in a very long time, Laura felt regret creep up inside her. It was a part of her life she hated remembering. A moment in time that made her want to hurt herself to distract from the pain of the memory. "Stryker said he would kill my mother if I didn't do what he said. She was the only person who ever treated me like I was more than a homegrown science experiment." Her voice was tight, constricted with control as she fought against emotion. Emotions were weaknesses. Weaknesses were unforgivable.
"In the end it didn't matter anyway. Stryker told my mother a secret. He showed her a room where he had twenty-seven more experiments being grown. So my mother decided we had to get out. She told me to destroy the pods, kill Stryker, then meet her and we would run. So the pods were destroyed, experiments X-24 through X-50 never having a chance at being created or duplicated. I found Stryker and was ready to destroy him as well. But then something happened." Laura's brow wrinkled, like she was watching a movie of her memories and couldn't understand the plot twist. "Something happened," she repeated, "and I lost control. I woke up in my cell a few days later. Stryker told me I'd killed my own mother. And I don't remember a moment of it."
She didn't like to think about other labs, but his comment made her remember that she was on a mission and needed to keep her mind on the task at hand. "It's possible," she conceded. "But right now there are larger problems looming. Like the people that set up the attack on the mansion and hired that mercenary who smells like dead fish and never shuts up. Since no one here seems to be doing anything about it, I figured I'd take matters into my own hands."
Laura watched Logan, saw the slight disappointment on his face. She felt it, too. It would have been different to help someone out of a desire that wasn't purely selfish. Her claws retracted as quickly as they'd popped out, her smirk wry. "You say lucky, I say fucked up. The claws were bone they took out of me, coated with the adamantium, then forced back in. Nothing like what you had to go through."