A/N: The sequel of The Alpha fight.
Disclaimer: If I owned DA, do you actually think it would be off the air? I only own my original characters.
FEMALE INSTINCT .
"Cece!" Max screamed as she strolled into Jam Pony her eyes searching for the blonde female around the room.
Max caught a glimpse of the female moving to the rows of lockers and followed her. She found the blonde transgenic when she was stuffing something inside her locker.
Max leaned against the locker when Cece closed the door.
"Hey Max!" The blonde said with a soft smile.
"Hey." Max answered with a frown looking at Cece.
"Oh by the way sorry for the…" Cece said using her hand to motion her cheek, she flushed a bit and looked down.
"What? Oh, that!" Max touched her tender cheek. "Forget about it! I'll let it pass since you owe me an explanation. But don't try to do it again." She said as she eyed up and down the other female.
Cece laughed. "Not to be crude Max or anything." She began. "But there is no way that right now you could take me on. Not even me, that I'm a field med and I have less hand to hand combat training than the others."
Max glared at her. "Oh wanna try me?" She spat at Cece.
Cece raised an eyebrow at this and leaned back on the balls of her feet. "Max, I'm only going to tell you this once. You can't. I have ten years on you in training and for I could see last night, are not in touch with your instincts, meaning I could kill you easily."
Max raised an eyebrow at this. "Trust me, I could take you on. Instincts? We ain't animals to have'em" She snorted the last part.
Cece rolled her eyes. " We are part animal in case you forgot ." Cece retorted.
Max crossed her hands over chest. "Care to enlighten me on the instincts then?"
Cece smirked and nodded. "Come on, follow me." Motioning with her hand for Max to follow her he started to walk towards the area where the eating tables where.
Max hesitated for a second before following when she saw what table they were headed for but quickly made up her mind. They approached the table where Alec, Biggs, Mike and Luke were seating. Max nodded her head to the blue eyed transgenic and his eyes flashed green for a moment before turning back blue as he acknowledged her. Her eyes drifted to Alec and she noted that he looked much better than the night before, the bruising had mostly faded overnight.
The tall brunette with chin length hair and chocolate eyes avoided her gaze again and she frowned. His gaze drifted to Alec and a smile broke across his features as he laughed at something that the other male said.
As they walked over to them, Max could feel the hairs in the back of her neck stand to attention before noticing the ease they all showed when around each other. Alec's eyes moved from the males on the table and drifted to her and Cece as they closed in. His eyes drifted past her and he nodded in Cece's direction before she took a seat with them.
Max took a seat next to Luke as Cece sat in Biggs's lap. She nodded to Alec meeting his eyes
"How's the arm?" Max asked.
He looked at his right arm and raised it a little. "Has seen better days. But I was well taken care off last night if you know what I mean." Alec answered with a cocky grin.
Max rolled her eyes and glared at him. The males on the table but Biggs nodded and chuckled and Max noted that Cece glared at Biggs as if daring him to say anything. She felt a feeling of awareness creep up on her spine as her eyes connected with the couple and she quickly stood up, startling everyone in the table at the sudden reaction. Cece flashed her a knowing grin and shook her head.
"Uhg, Cece?" Max asked, feeling self-conscious of all the eyes upon her.
"Yes Max?" Cece answered trying to stop herself from smiling.
"Uhg, I've got a hot run in sector eight. Wanna join me?" Max looked at her feet avoiding the eyes of the males on the table.
Alec raised an eyebrow and smirked at the females as he met Cece's eyes. She nodded at both Alec and Max. She stood up giving Biggs a soft kiss on the lips, he pulled her down again by the back of her neck with a smirk and gave her a passionate kiss. She smiled to the kiss, her lips lingering on his before walking away.
As Max and Cece walked away she could feel three pairs of eyes following her. She fought the urge to turn around to see whose eyes were. But something told her that she didn't need to turn around to know exactly whose eyes were following her every move.
The moment they were outside Jam Pony Cece stepped in front of Max and cocked her head to the side.
"Max you with me?" Cece laughed.
"Uh?" Max answered her eyes focusing on Cece.
Cece laughed again and dragged her along to their bikes. The delivery was quick and they were both well tipped by the old man. They rode their bikes quietly until they decided to stop at a small diner somewhere around sector nine to have lunch.
"So" Max began as she pulled a chair out to sit down. "Can we start from the beginning? I want to understand what's going on. What do you mean Alec is an alpha?"
Cece nodded. "Not an alpha. THE Alpha" She searched Max's confused expression and sighed. " You guys were too young when you escaped. And somehow I think you didn't stick together with your unit." Cece mumbled.
Max nodded. "Zack said it wasn't tactical for us to stick together."
"Spoken like a true Commanding Officer, that 599 sure was something." Cece said with a smile.
"Zack." Max corrected.
"Yeah, you Niners and your names." Cece shook her head and Max raised an eyebrow.
"Moving onto the story." Max said as she pinned Cece with a harsh look. Cece returned it and the moment their eyes met Max felt all the hairs in the back of her neck stand. She met the glare head on and Cece broke away the staring contest.
"Pretty high up in the chain are we." Cece mumbled looking to the floor and fighting the urge to lower her head. She raised her eyes and met Max's gaze again but without threat before nodding.
"After you escaped, Manticore broke the units, taking all the clones away and never allowing groups of X5's to be together alone at the same time." Cece began her story looking outside the window to the streets, seemingly lost in the memories.
"We were all punished because of the escape but Alec and the other clones got it worse." Cece said as her gaze met Max's.
"Besides the extra Psy-ops trips, they were always selected for extra training and re-indoctrination, torturing them to see if they could find the flaw, trying to make them want to escape to see if it was genetic. Most of the clones didn't survive, but the ones who did survived developed in a good way, according to Manticore's standards." Cece continued with a grim smile.
"Alec, 211, 453 and 206 were some of the only clones who survived. All of them were pushed so hard to their limit that they seemed to have had become slightly stronger than the other X5's, I guess being pushed so much made them want to prove the superiors that they were better. The clones returned to their units around mid 2012." Cece looked at the sandwich in her hand and hesitated before taking a bite.
"Soon after they returned, the older females got their first heat. The heat triggered our animal side and there was lots of fighting amongst the ranks. The males were vicious in their fights as they ranked themselves in order of victories. In each unit there was an Alpha, and those Alphas fought amongst themselves to determine who was superior to whom." She said as Max looked at her intently.
"Alec won all the fights." Cece said with a smirk as she looked at Max again in the eyes.
"What do you mean that heat triggered their instincts?" Max asked looking down to her own sandwich.
"I take it you've never been near a male while in heat." Max shook her head and Cece sighed. "This gonna take longer than I thought."
Max raised an eyebrow at this but let it slide off.
"Heat is a counter effect of our animal DNA, X5's have mostly cat DNA of course. When we go to heat our human side wants to scratch an itch, while the animal side wants to mate. That was why the fights began. In nature females go for the available Alpha, so what happened with us was the same. They fought to establish ranking order. Females have our own ranking order too, but we don't fight to establish it. Our instincts tell us automatically who is an alpha to us. It is similar to the way lionesses know who is higher on the ranking chain than the other." Cece explained.
Max looked outside the window and saw an old woman pass by. Her eyes shifted to the rooftops and she caught a glimpse of a shadow moving across them
"Cece?" She asked quietly. "After last night I got like this knowing feeling going through me, making me aware of stuff I never quite noticed before."
Cece smirked at this. "That creeping feeling? It's called instinct Max, the Alpha fight apparently awoke it."
Max raised an eyebrow at this. " Well that 'instinct' as you call it has been quite fuzzy and sending me mixed signals."
"That's what happens when you are not exactly tuned with them." Cece said as she sipped her juice.
"Female instincts are strong Max do not ignore them. You will regret it if you don't listen to me." Cece said as Max stood up and started to pick up her stuff.
"I've lived twenty years of my life without them. They don't mean shit to me." Max said over her shoulder as she left Cece seating on the table alone.
Cece shook her head and watched Max's departing back. She from the corner of her eye she saw a shadow blur across the nearby rooftops following Max. "Of all the available females in the world Alec you had to chose the one who doesn't want to be like us."
TBC.