Disclaimer: I don't own them, you think I would be working my rear off,
and going to college if I did?
You wake up, you open your eyes, and you start living in the world again. How many days do you start like that? A hundred, a thousand? It doesn't really matter how your day will go, whether you will even remember said day five years from now. It doesn't matter, you might inherit a million dollars, or lose your sanity, or find true love. The funny thing though, is that in that first thirty seconds of waking, you don't know which way things will go, the time just stretches into an infinity of possibilities. If I had known that today was the day that I would lose myself, I would have found a better use for that thirty seconds.
"Alec, my man, you look like hell." Sketchy's voice rasped against my supremely sensitive hearing; and made my poor pounding head droop a few inches further towards the floor. I did my best to put on a devil-may- care smile, and swung my eyes up to face him. "Ya know buddy, so many lovely ladies, so little time." A smirk completed the deal, and I knew that the explanation would satisfy him. Sure, telling my friend that I had spent the night rescuing a pair of badly beaten and frightened x-6's from certain death at the hands of White would have made me sound just as manly; but, I thought with a sigh, that was precisely the reason that Clark Kent had gone around looking like a first rate geek.
Huh, maybe that was where Logan got it. Perhaps he had started out life, as a cool, debonair ladies man. Then devastated by losing some blond babe love of his life, he had decided to save the world, and had therefore adopted a Geek by Day persona. This led me to the disturbing thought, that I was cool and debonair, and might someday be an amazing polyester-clad hacker.
"Crack." In my unfortunate daydreaming, I had managed to walk smack into the middle of the lockers.
"God-Damnit Alec." Ah, of course, to make my day even more extra special, it would have to have been the locker next to Max's.
"Well I'm humbly sorry, oh my supreme high leader," I lowered my head to her ear, and pitched my voice so that only she could hear it, "but, as you may recall I was a teeny, tiny bit busy last night, and a few of us actually DO need to sleep." She actually had the grace to look slightly chagrined at this. She hid the expression with her usual speed and turned back to Original Cindy.
"I don't know how much longer we can keep this up OC." She looked grim, and I wanted desperately to smooth the tired creases from between her brows. "We've rescued eight of our kind from White this week alone, and god only knows how many we haven't managed to get to in time." "Drastic measures are in order, but I'll be damned if I know what to do about it."
I hold back a sigh of relief. Much as I have wanted to deny it, twenty years of training has been nagging at me, telling me that our measures against White are far from being enough. For every transgenic that we rescue, ten more may be killed on the streets. Perhaps it is fear that holds myself and especially Max, back. To fight back fully, we run a high risk of exposure. With exposure comes the loss of everything that we have worked so hard to keep, normal jobs and friends. Even the ability to hang out at Crash, and walk down the street. However, I know better than to think that Max would ever leave her family in danger, just to keep her own comforts; and surprisingly, I find that I am not unwillingly to throw it all into the fray if it means making things safe for my kind. I surprise myself further by speaking up, risking the all too likely of finding Maxes elbow planted on my nose.
"We knew it would come to this, exposing ourselves and fighting it out in public view." "White has too many soldiers, and too many allies to fight in secret." "The only question is, how long until we are forced out into the open?" It was a foolish comment for me to make. Not that I didn't have a valid point, but such a statement obviously offended the basest principles of Murphy's law, and I found myself desperately seeking out a piece of wood to knock on.
It was then that it happened. We felt it, rather than saw it. The tense quivering of screams out on the streets, and the reverberating of gunfire. My last coherent thought, as a stray shattered the tired oak bench beside my thigh, was that the wood seemed to have found me instead.
You wake up, you open your eyes, and you start living in the world again. How many days do you start like that? A hundred, a thousand? It doesn't really matter how your day will go, whether you will even remember said day five years from now. It doesn't matter, you might inherit a million dollars, or lose your sanity, or find true love. The funny thing though, is that in that first thirty seconds of waking, you don't know which way things will go, the time just stretches into an infinity of possibilities. If I had known that today was the day that I would lose myself, I would have found a better use for that thirty seconds.
"Alec, my man, you look like hell." Sketchy's voice rasped against my supremely sensitive hearing; and made my poor pounding head droop a few inches further towards the floor. I did my best to put on a devil-may- care smile, and swung my eyes up to face him. "Ya know buddy, so many lovely ladies, so little time." A smirk completed the deal, and I knew that the explanation would satisfy him. Sure, telling my friend that I had spent the night rescuing a pair of badly beaten and frightened x-6's from certain death at the hands of White would have made me sound just as manly; but, I thought with a sigh, that was precisely the reason that Clark Kent had gone around looking like a first rate geek.
Huh, maybe that was where Logan got it. Perhaps he had started out life, as a cool, debonair ladies man. Then devastated by losing some blond babe love of his life, he had decided to save the world, and had therefore adopted a Geek by Day persona. This led me to the disturbing thought, that I was cool and debonair, and might someday be an amazing polyester-clad hacker.
"Crack." In my unfortunate daydreaming, I had managed to walk smack into the middle of the lockers.
"God-Damnit Alec." Ah, of course, to make my day even more extra special, it would have to have been the locker next to Max's.
"Well I'm humbly sorry, oh my supreme high leader," I lowered my head to her ear, and pitched my voice so that only she could hear it, "but, as you may recall I was a teeny, tiny bit busy last night, and a few of us actually DO need to sleep." She actually had the grace to look slightly chagrined at this. She hid the expression with her usual speed and turned back to Original Cindy.
"I don't know how much longer we can keep this up OC." She looked grim, and I wanted desperately to smooth the tired creases from between her brows. "We've rescued eight of our kind from White this week alone, and god only knows how many we haven't managed to get to in time." "Drastic measures are in order, but I'll be damned if I know what to do about it."
I hold back a sigh of relief. Much as I have wanted to deny it, twenty years of training has been nagging at me, telling me that our measures against White are far from being enough. For every transgenic that we rescue, ten more may be killed on the streets. Perhaps it is fear that holds myself and especially Max, back. To fight back fully, we run a high risk of exposure. With exposure comes the loss of everything that we have worked so hard to keep, normal jobs and friends. Even the ability to hang out at Crash, and walk down the street. However, I know better than to think that Max would ever leave her family in danger, just to keep her own comforts; and surprisingly, I find that I am not unwillingly to throw it all into the fray if it means making things safe for my kind. I surprise myself further by speaking up, risking the all too likely of finding Maxes elbow planted on my nose.
"We knew it would come to this, exposing ourselves and fighting it out in public view." "White has too many soldiers, and too many allies to fight in secret." "The only question is, how long until we are forced out into the open?" It was a foolish comment for me to make. Not that I didn't have a valid point, but such a statement obviously offended the basest principles of Murphy's law, and I found myself desperately seeking out a piece of wood to knock on.
It was then that it happened. We felt it, rather than saw it. The tense quivering of screams out on the streets, and the reverberating of gunfire. My last coherent thought, as a stray shattered the tired oak bench beside my thigh, was that the wood seemed to have found me instead.