Note To Readers: Here I have posted recaps of Max Allan Collins' Skin Game, and of my own The Calm, which was Part One of this story. I figured this might be necessary for some readers who never read Skin Game, or who waited through all the stops and pauses while I abandoned The Calm and need a reminder of events. Anyone who doesn't neet to brush up can just skip ahead to the Prologue.
Skin Game, by Max Allan Collins
The night Manticore burned, Max drew the attention of a chameleon-like Transgenic named Kelpy. Kelpy was instantly enamoured with Max, but was a recluse by nature, afraid of making himself known. Instead, he followed her to Seattle, watching her closely. He took a job at Jam Pony, his obsession with her growing daily.
After the escape from the Jam Pony siege into Terminal City, Cindy, Logan and Sketchy were forced to sneak out of the biohazard zone, in order to avoid being struck down by the numerous lethal toxins in the area. Logan, having bought a house just outside the perimeter, was able to provide safe passage in and out of Terminal City, by means of a tunnel connecting the Transgenics hideaway and his new property. He also devised a way to reach the public if necessary. At this time, the Eyes Only network was still down following the attack on Logan's apartment and the destruction of his equipment, so he told Sketchy that if he had any information they needed the world at large to know about, he would make a drop at Sandeman's/Joshua's old house, which Sketchy would then bring to his editor at New World Weekly.
When Kelpy's Tryptophan supplier - the nurse Familiar who tried to kill Max in the hospital - was killed, Ames took her place supplying Tryptophan to Kelpy, but not before lacing the supply with a mix of drugs that drove the already unstable Transgenic over the ragged edge.
Kelpy went insane and began killing people, and when rumours of a Transgenic serial killer began to spread, the others in Terminal City offered to help capture him.
Otto Gottlieb, concerned about White's motives and suspicious of his actions, began investigating his boss. When he found out the truth about Kelpy, he approached Ramon Clemente, who passed the word onto Max.
Becoming enraged at the idea of Max leading an effort to stop him, Kelpy decided to take the place of who he saw to be the most important person in her life – Logan. He captured Logan after tracking him to the Terminal City house, but wound up being cornered by Alec and Joshua. In a panic, he couldn't maintain proper control over his morphing ability, and without meaning to, altered his genome and appearance to resemble Logan's. When Max arrived, the standoff broke into a fight, and when Max attacked Kelpy, he was struck by the virus Manticore had implanted in her to kill Logan.
Before Kelpy died, Logan launched used the equipment at Terminal City to launch an Eyes Only broadcast. Kelpy's dying confession, along with the information provided by Gottlieb, made Ames White a fugitive.
The exposure of White's actions made for quite a lot of potential embarrassment for his bosses, which the Transgenics hoped to level the playing field and give them an opportunity to negotiate for their freedom.
The Calm
On a ranch not far outside Seattle, Zack has been suffering from nightmares and flashes of memory he can't quite identify, mixed in with the reprogramming efforts made by his captors after the ill-fated attack on Manticore. He knows he's a Transgenic, but remembers little else. The one thing he knows for certain is that Max, his most prominent memory, as well as a well-known face since the Jam Pony siege, has the answers he needs to piece his life back together.
When a suicide bomber made it over the perimeter fence at Terminal City, Alec shielded Max from the brunt of the blast, and was almost killed as a result of massive head trauma from the force of the explosion. Logan sent Dr. Sam Carr into Terminal City to help, and Sam was able relieve the pressure on Alec's brain. He has since made a full recovery, despite the fact that Max came close to strangling him for being so 'stupid' as to jump in front of an exploding bomb to protect her.
Logan left a package for Sketchy at Joshua's old house, containing information gathered about the Familiars. When Sketchy brought the package to his editor, as instructed, she produced the results of an investigation of her own – an article she had planned on running that very week, which would identify Logan Cale as Eyes Only. Instead, she decided to bury the story for the time being, and offered Sketchy the opportunity to write the story Logan had provided about the Familiars. She teamed him up with a more experienced reporter named Ben Mitchell. Unknown to them, Mitchell is a Familiar, placed at New World Weekly following their coverage of the Transgenic story.
Since they had covered the Manticore escapees long before the rest of the world had even believed any such beings existed, New World Weekly had gained quite a reputation as a trustworthy source of information, quite to the surprise of the staff and editor, who usually enjoyed making up stories about aliens in Congress and the President's android wife. Mitchell, like other Familiars placed among various news media, was there in case they ever found out anything his people didn't want the world knowing.
Logan, having Sketchy followed by an unidentified Transgenic, was informed about Mitchell attempting to follow Sketchy. He called Sketchy and told him not to go to the house but didn't say why. Sketchy, having instantly developed distrust of the other reporter, thought Mitchell was simply trying to steal the story. The following morning, Sketchy had two shadows he couldn't see – the Transgenic Logan had watching over him, and a pair of Familiars tasked by the Conclave to attempt to locate and capture Logan by following Sketchy to his source.
In order to make it easier to keep close watch on him, and avoid raising the suspicions of the two Familiars should they notice her hanging around, Sketchy's protector approached him in Crash, introducing herself as 'Melissa'. Sketchy, having no idea who his new girlfriend really is, is happy to just consider himself blessed, completely unaware that at any moment he could be killed by the very people he's been writing a report about.
Donald Lydecker, presumed dead since his car was found in a river, has been watching the Terminal City situation from a distance. The day of the bombing, he contacted Logan, knowing better than to believe the story put out to the public – that Max and Alec were both dead. He asked Logan to get in touch with Max and arrange a meeting.
When Max and Lydecker met up the next day – Max in disguise to avoid recognition, and covered from all angles by a security detail of half a dozen Transgenics in case Lydecker tried anything, Lydecker offered a gesture of good faith by revealing that Senator James McKinley was a Familiar. McKinley was also the Director of Manticore for a short time, between Sandeman's leaving and Lydecker assuming command, having been placed there while the Conclave decided whether or not they should arrange to have Manticore shut down, and all the Transgenics destroyed. It was McKinley who ordered the Manticore guards to rip out Isaac's tongue. Also, during his brief tenure, he ordered the execution of a pair of X-3s who attempted to escape from Manticore through the Infirmary. Lydecker wouldn't reveal how he had uncovered this information.
Before Max departed, Lydecker told her that his assistance was always available if required. Unknown to Max et al, Lydecker is taking orders from somebody else, and while all eyes were on the pair of them when they met up, a team under Lydecker's command placed a tracker on Max's motorcycle. That night, the same team assaulted and annihilated a Phalanx unit deployed by the Conclave to kill Max, who had been spotted by Sketchy's shadows when Max dropped in on her friends. The attack was carried out before the Phalanx could ambush her. The whole fight went by without Max ever knowing her life had been in jeopardy to begin with.
The Phalanx team leader, Thula, who had already been humiliated when the attack on Jam Pony descended into farce, was cornered by her attackers, bleeding from gunshot wounds in both her legs. Despite these injuries, the sight of Lydecker was more than enough to make her leap to her feet. Lydecker barely avoided having his throat ripped out when Thula attacked, screaming at him and calling him a 'reject'. Before Lydecker finished her off with two bullets in the face, she commented that he 'never should have been born'.
When Logan called Sketchy to tell him there was another package at Joshua's house for him, he instructed him not to tell Ben Mitchell about the information contained within, but to show it only to his editor. Logan warned him that Mitchell was dangerous, but also assured him that he was protected. He didn't go into details, just told him not let himself be followed to the house.
When the first part of Sketchy's article was released, it contained something the Familiars didn't expect when they had decided that letting the story go ahead if it meant they might get to Logan was worth the risk – everything Logan had managed to uncover about Eric Sandeman, the former Manticore director, and father of all the Transgenics. Mention was also made of Sandeman's not-so-happy family, including his eldest son, Alain, who would become Ames White.
Realising their mistake at letting the story run, the Conclave have decided that drastic action is required. Their orders, passed down through McKinley to Mitchell, are to eliminate Sketchy's editor, Sketchy himself, and anyone the pair have ever met, as a warning to Logan. McKinley has also reactivated the techies White used to track Logan's broadcasts before, confident that if Logan can't be captured, then he can at least be kept on the run to the point where he'll have no opportunity to keep Eyes Only online. McKinley commented to Mitchell that the game of Cat & Mouse doesn't have to go on for very long, anyway. The time the Familiars have been waiting for rapidly approaches.
Max, furious at Logan's actions, as well as for keeping her in the dark about the whole thing, begins making her way to his hideaway to confront him. Before she can get there, however, she is attacked by Lydecker's assault team, being led by Otto Gottlieb.
A rescue team is sent from Terminal City to find Max and bring her home. Alec, despite being a fairly famous face since the Jam Pony siege and the incident with Kelpy, refuses to stay behind, and goes separately. When he's recognised by Sector Police, a large number of Municipal Police officers who were on there way to check out reports of gunfire on Pike Street (where Max has been chased into the Farmer's Market by Gottlieb and his team) divert to try and hunt Alec down instead. This clears the way for the rescue team, but by the time they get there, there's no sign of Max or her abductors.
Later, a drugged Max is sealed into a coffin on board a cargo plane bound for Quebec.