Title: Taken Paths

Author: JetBlack

Summary: What would happen if Alec was Max and Max was Alec? And if it had been his group instead to escape from Manticore. If everything in season 1 had happened to Alec while Max was still the loyal little Manticore puppet. AU

Disclaimer. You no sue me.

A/N This was a challenge from nunswithpens. At first it was weird writing this. Basically Max and Alec switch bodies. Alec escaped in 09. And basically everything that happened to Max has happened to Alec in this universe, or close to. Alec will have her personality or close to, Max will be sarcastic. Some things I'll have to change, I cant exactly have Alec threaten Max every five seconds of kicking her ass. The first chapter will be in Alec's point of view, sort of like a prologue. Actually it is a prologue what am I saying. See it says right there.

Prologue

I lay on my bunk staring unblinking at the ceiling; I count the spots that dot its cold cement surface. I still can't believe I'm back here, back at Manticore; it's like my life is starting all over again.

A cold shiver runs down my spine as I think of the escape; I can still feel the cold sting of the water of when I fell through the ice and Biggs was forced to go on without me. I didn't wanna get split up but Cyd made us. She was our CO and she always knew what to do. Twelve of us escaped that night, I never found out whom, at least not all of them. This past year it seems has been the year for reunions never really on happy terms though.

When Cyd first found me I'd been staying in Seattle, had been for three years. The four-room apartment I shared with Original Cindy and Sketchy was cramped but it was home. I'd spent the first ten years of my life learning the fine art of assassination only to spend the next ten always on the run, always looking over my shoulder but Seattle had felt right and I'd stayed. I had a job, friends, a life, but Cyd hadn't seemed to understand that. She'd wanted me to relocate but I couldn't leave.

I miss everything right now; Jampony, Crash, hanging with the gang and scoping out the girls with OC and Sketch. For some reason beyond me I even missed Normal the uptight bigot. And then there is Asha. Somehow when I broke into that little dingy apartment to steal that TV I'd never expected to be met by a 44 millimeter pointed to my head and some blonde S1W member wanting to fight the good fight. But in all the chaos we built a friendship and it was because of her that I found my siblings, the few that I saw again.

Pix had always been quiet back at Manticore, I remember her short chestnut hair cut in the classic Manticore buzz cut. When I saw her again she wasn't so good. We did everything to save her, we captured Lydecker, we got ourselves caught, Cyd and me got her out but in the end we couldn't cure progeria. It was her decision and we respected it and I promised my soul that we'd go back for her.

So much stuff happened this last year.

OC found out about me, it wasn't my fault but in the end she dealt and things went back to normal, or as normal as they could be.

I got to see Jesse again, she had the life we all wanted; a family, she even had a little boy. Life is never easy for us and in the end it didn't end well. It ended as well as it could for us. And through all of this Asha and me got closer, I helped her deal when her fellow S1W member died in a shooting and she helped me when I found Sam.

I never did tell her what had happened, because I don't even want to know myself. Every time I think of her the guilt is unbearable and it feels like I'm there again in the woods with the helicopters closing in. Sam had always been so innocent, so understanding and loyal. Even though she was younger than I was she'd protect me, all of us.

And then on the outside everything changed, but she hadn't. She'd always stayed in the mind of a nine-year-old. Nothing made any more sense to her, she couldn't find reason and so she started killing. She'd draw her barcode on the back of her victims' necks and then hunt and kill them. She was killing herself over and over. She'd give the teeth to the Blue Lady.

Sam believed in her.

When I tried to stop her she got hurt; there was no way we could have gotten out together so she begged me. I've never forgiven myself and I still carry her burden. I suppose I always will. Then two weeks ago Cyd, Hyph, Sprit and me found ourselves allying with our own personal Satan to take down Manticore to stop running. At the cost of Cyd.

She'd always said emotions were weaknesses that it was all phony sentimentality but in the end I guess she didn't believe it as much as she used to. Her heart beats in my chest now; it hurts to even think about it, to know that she loved that much, that she was willing to sacrifice her own life.

I lay on my bunk and stare unblinking at the ceiling. 374 dots color its cement surface.

The sound of metal clanging breaks me out of my thoughts and I sit up watching the door slide open and then she walks in.