Disclaimer: Dark Angel belongs to Cameron/Eglee and 20th Century Fox. No infringement intended, though much fun had.
Author's Note: Thank you guys for the wonderful response!
Carnal Knowledge
by scarlet (superscar)
Chapter Two
Seattle, Washington - 2019
There was an obvious downside to selling your only mode of transportation, Alec discovered as he walked back to Harbor Lights. But he had a job, sort of. A 'gig', you might say. If you were a guitarist or an actor. A plan was probably the best way to characterize it as a thief. It didn't sound too bad. Luckily, the advantage of a 'two-man' job was it involved two. Separate, as in, he would go in one entrance, Max would go in another. She wouldn't have to see him cheat his genetically enhanced ass off.
In the meantime, Rachel had a bed for the next couple nights and Alec reserved the chair next to it.
The city was just waking up, for the most part. The vendors had been around for hours, but the lines had only just started to pile up in front of their booths. Apartment buildings lined the streets, but they were all in disrepair. Most had signs warning the building was condemned, but squatters poured out the doors regardless. He couldn't help wondering if it would be hard to find a place. They wouldn't be able to advertise for apartments people weren't technically allowed to live in. At least not in any traditional way. Of course, he could probably just sleep under an awning and beat the shit out of anyone that came near him, but it didn't sound like a path to a quality REM cycle and eventually, he'd need a few.
All he really wanted to do was crawl into bed next to Rachel and pretend everything would be fine, so he could close his eyes and turn back the clock.
Alec stopped walking, alert. Even lost in thought, he'd been trained to notice if he was under surveillance. He took a sharp right, hopped into an alleyway and heard a muttered curse and hurried footsteps. It wasn't subtle enough for Manticore, but that only raised more questions. Who would follow him? Who even knew he was there? Max? Jimmy? If they were regretting the price they'd negotiated, they'd only learn the hard way.
His surveillance rounded the corner and he pounced, clamping his hand around their neck and listening to the breath whoosh from their lungs. It was a woman, as it turned out. She had very red hair, deeper than fire and ill fitting clothing, far too tight for full movement. Alec couldn't help but notice the path of her neckline, lower than any he'd ever seen, outlining breasts that practically popped from her shirt.
She started choking and he let her go as she doubled over.
"Why are you following me?"
"Just...thought you were cute," she gasped.
Cute. Rachel had said that too. What confused him was the understatement. 'Cute' was a description he was given to understand had a soft connotation. Young animals were cute. Pigtails on little girls were cute. Alec was a fucking soldier. If women wanted to compliment his physical characteristics they should use proper vocabulary. He wasn't cute, he was perfect. Superior.
"Puppies are cute," Alec said, glaring.
"Fine, baby, you're sex on legs. You wanna go or what? Fifty bucks for the extra kink. Just let go before I pass out, aiight?"
He wanted, very badly, to ask what she was talking about, but he didn't understand the combination of words out of her mouth. Sex was an animal mating ritual that resulted in offspring between ordinaries and forbidden at Manticore. He supposed, from her language, that she wanted to engage in that sort of activity while standing up, but that would kill her. Obviously, she didn't know that or she wouldn't make an invitation, but he thought she was unwise to engage in such mating rituals with a stranger and even as he considered it, Alec realized what she was. A prostitute. He'd learned about them strictly in respect to language. Whore and slut were common slang terms meant to suggest that someone either was a prostitute or acting like one, but it got confusing because sometimes it meant they were just not particularly well liked.
Ironic, as he'd assumed prostitutes would be very well liked.
He found the concept of sex fascinating and was extremely jealous that ordinaries could fuck any time they wanted to without fear of danger. It was possible, of course, that he could take the prostitute up on her offer and let her die, but without strategic advantage, Alec just couldn't feel comfortable killing someone out of what could be termed biological curiosity. This was aside from the practical concern of hiding the body, which would only take up time better spent with Rachel.
"No, thanks." Alec tried to get around the woman, but her hand slipped down the front of the cargo pants he'd snagged from a locker at the hospital. Breath hissing from between his teeth, Alec's hand clamped around her wrist, unsure whether to push her off him or rub against her as all the blood in his body seemed to focus in that area.
"Don't feel too sure about that, champ," she whispered. "Twenty bucks, let Candy take all that pain away."
She'd said fifty before, so clearly the price was negotiable. But Alec didn't want Candy to take his pain away, he wanted to go back to the hospital, pay off the nurse and lay his head down next to Rachel's arm and not have to think about anything until Max showed up.
Max was the wrong person to think of with a hooker's hand down his pants.
"Maybe some other time," he said firmly, retracting her claws from his person.
"Look, I'm clean, if that's what you're worried about," she insisted.
Alec wasn't even sure what she was talking about.
"Five bucks for a hand job," Candy begged. "Final offer and I'll let you be on your way. Promise I'll be quick... or not! If you want it to go longer."
"I don't have that kind of cash," Alec pushed past her quickly, but couldn't help wondering... What was a hand job?
XXX
In the decade that Max had been out of Manticore, she'd mostly bounced around the Pacific Northwest, keeping mostly to populated areas. It seemed counter-intuitive if someone was after you. Might be a better idea to keep to high ground with an eye to the road out in the middle of no where, but it made a person crazy. Two weeks, she'd lived in a box in the middle of Montana, overlooking a statuesque wilderness that scared the shit out of her.
Every time something moved, she was terrified.
It was hard to be anonymous if there were only five people in two hundred miles. Everyone was so excited just to see another soul, they'd ask question after question until Max had no idea how she could possibly make up another story about her life before the pulse.
The first time she'd set foot in Seattle was after she'd ruined things pretty spectacularly in Los Angeles with an incident she really didn't want to think about involving a genetically enhanced case of extreme arousal and a guy that didn't understand why she would turn her 'God, yes' into a 'hell, no.'
After about a year and a half, Lydecker's presence in the area was probably a hint to move it on up the coast and finally hop the border, but Max liked Seattle. She could give it a few more months if she kept her head down. Deck would assume she'd moved on to another city and maybe he would follow suit.
"Crash later?"
Max smiled as her best friend spun the combination on her locker. All of her life, it had been an advantage to be able to read people and predict situations. With Cindy, Max never knew what she would say or how she'd manage to say it, only that when she talked about herself, it was almost always in the third person. "Might put in an appearance."
"Or might skip out like last night?" Cindy asked. "Not that Original Cindy blames you with the ex sniffing around like you might forget the story."
Darren. Mistake to start, mistake to continue, relief to end. "I forget who you mean."
"For real, you should."
"Already done." She wanted to drop the subject and forget about the mess that was her romantic life, but it was just too much. "What is wrong with men?"
Cindy's eyebrows rose. "Since you remember who you're talking to, that has to be a rhetorical question?"
"Whatever, I'm done with them." Until her wacked out biological clock put her back in the ball game, of course. Which would probably be soon. Then, she would either spend three days out of her mind with lust or worse, find herself dealing with the awkward morning after. Maybe if any of that pain replaced the monthly menstrual cycle that plagued every other woman on the planet, but it didn't. Every 19 to 37 days like the rest of her irregular life.
"If you're ready to switch teams, let me just say... It's about time." Cindy had never really understood why any 'fine-ass female' wouldn't want to be a lesbian.
"Sorry, OC, not off the team, just on the bench."
"Is the package I gave you going to bike itself to Sector Five?"
As Max's boss poked his head unpleasantly into the conversation, she was suddenly inspired. "I'll take that."
It was hard to say who was more shocked, Reagan "Normal" Ronald or Cindy, but Sector Five was perfect. She could deliver the package, swing by Harbor Lights and still hit Crash before the job that night.
XXX
Harbor Lights was crowded during the day. Alec appreciated the anonymity of it, but not the lack of privacy. The bathrooms open to the public were dirty from overuse and lack of funding. Most of the cleaning staff dedicated its time to the sterile areas, where bacteria could literally be a matter of life and death. The toilet bowls had long since lost even the dingey appearance of white and even the strong scent of urinal cakes couldn't overwhelm the rest of the foul odors.
Even in their sorry state, Harbor Lights easily beat the public bathroom facilities on the street so many had turned to after the pulse.
But Alec was spoiled. He hadn't been forced to live in the degradation of post-pulse Seattle. Manticore had set him up with a cozy little apartment in Sector Nine where he easily commuted to the Berrisford's blue blood mansion. Manticore itself was as sterile as they were able to make it. All it took was one trip to the bathroom and Alec wanted to vomit. From the smell of things, he wouldn't have been the first.
After that, he started sneaking into the doctor's bathroom. The door was barred with a combination padlock, which was less a barrier than an invitation and it was easy to keep track of the few doctors on the wing.
He'd helped himself to some of their clothes. It wasn't like they didn't have more where those came from. If Rachel was under any more than a week, he'd actually have to go get his own wardrobe, which was a hassle because where would he put it? That's what ordinaries had houses for. At Manticore, there was a basket just inside the door to the barracks that contained every item of clothing they would need for the day. Generally, that was standard issue camo pants, combat boots, a t-shirt, white athletic socks and boxer briefs. It was always interesting to see what happened on the first day of a solo operation. Whoever was in charge of the wardrobe during away missions was a lot more creative. Detail was everything. From unique clothing and jewelry to hair and nail polish. Everything had to look perfect. That was a big theme for Manticore.
Weakness was shame. Emotions were a problem to be fixed with psychoactive drugs and negative stimuli.
Even lying to Rachel had been such a relief. The one time she caught him, it had been ridiculously easy to explain himself. Every step of his training made the infiltration of the Berrisford household simple. But nothing could have prepared him for Rachel. What could have, except a normal childhood? Even then, he couldn't imagine she wouldn't have bowled him over anyway. He'd pretend to be Simon when he was with her. Sometimes he would swear that he had been, that she'd made him let go of himself.
But at the same time, he was more physically aware. There was no real way to keep track of time in Manticore. He wasn't sure how old he was, or about how old he had been when the change occurred, but it coincided with a sudden appearance of body hair that had frightened him terribly. Surely only the basement people had to worry about such things? He hadn't told anyone. In fact, he had pulled as many as could be reached, but it was difficult. They had physical exams so often that it had been impossible to hide. But to his great relief, no one commented. Perhaps it was a natural byproduct of his feline DNA and there was nothing to be done about it.
At the time, he hadn't even considered that everyone else might have the same problem. Nor did he consider that they might be dealing with other common issues, such as the way his body suddenly began to betray him. The brass did a great job of keeping the soldiers on guard. They didn't socialize, just fought. All were paranoid that another transgenic might betray their confidence and it would cost them a month in psy-ops. Alec hadn't realized until years and years after the nightmare of his first nocturnal ejaculation that it might be related to normal, human physiology and may not have resulted in a trip to solitary unless they wanted the entire male population of Manticore stuffed in there as well.
By the time he'd met Rachel, Alec understood the evolutionary purpose of his discomfort, but her presence only made it three hundred times worse. By the end of their time together, she'd been more than aware of the pain she was putting him through and he could swear she was doing it purposefully. She'd wanted to go further than their heated kisses, even though she didn't have much more experience than Alec himself. He couldn't come up with a good excuse not to. There wasn't one, other than the truth, which he couldn't tell her. So he'd just said that he wanted to, but didn't think it was the right time yet. Not a lie. He really, really wanted to, but it could never be the right time.
Of course, it just made her think he was all the more romantic and deserving of her virginity.
It was only the knowledge that his passion would literally kill her that kept him from giving in. Manticore had warned of the risks in terms of practicality, they didn't want their soldiers leaving behind more bodies than necessary, especially when it might be traced back to them. For Alec, it was sheerly personal. He didn't want to hurt Rachel. Unlike every other person in his life, for her, he felt something soft, like the blankets the Berrisfords kept on the large, leather couch in front of the television. It used to be his favorite place in the whole house, when Rachel was there with him.
He'd learned to control his body's unwelcome preparation for a mating process that could never take place. He regulated the overreaction to her stimuli by stepping into the bathroom to employ a trick he'd learned through sheer experimentation in his bunk at Manticore as a youngster. The technique had been perfected to an efficient science over the years and really, Rachel's presence only made it quicker and easier to dash in and out of the washroom without anyone the wiser.
It wasn't the same without her, of course. The physical reaction from the prostitute was unwelcome in light of what happened to Rachel. He wished his body could just shut off completely from everything but the ability to sit by her side at every moment until she woke up. But in spite of his feelings, he had to eat. He had to get money. Would only deal with further discomfort if he didn't take care of the problem immediately when he stepped into the bathroom stall.
What other time would he have if it persisted? It would severely hinder the operation with Max later on in the day and in Alec's experience, the longer the temptation persisted, the stronger the need became and it wasn't what he wished to dwell on all afternoon with Rachel.
Ironic to think that just 48 hours earlier, thoughts of her would be enough to heat his body into rapid release, but every time her face danced in his head, his stomach turned and ardor cooled. The vague arousal that persisted made his skin crawl in frustration even as nausea clamored for attention. He could feel every inch of his body pounding with blood, as though he'd been lit on fire in the worst possible way as the opposing chill fought for dominance.
Forcefully, he tried to push Rachel from his head and focus on the prostitute in the alleyway. She'd wanted to give him a hand job. Was that what he was trying to do to himself at that very moment? Was that why it had been given the name? What would it feel like if it was her hand wrapped around him? Would it be more exciting? More relaxing? More frustrating because she wasn't in his head and wouldn't know how to do it right? Surely prostitutes knew what they were doing.
Another image danced in his head and he clung to it, desperately. Sultry brown eyes winked at him through long dark lashes, playing out scenes from the television set. Full lips parted slowly, her dark curls bounced as she tossed her head. Miss me, Alec? the imaginary woman asked as, finally, his body rocked with the familiar explosion, letting go of the torment.
Breathing hard, Alec leaned against the wall, still shaking. It was over. Slowly, he pulled himself back together, washed his hands, slipped into a new set of clothing from locker 24 and jogged back down the hallway.
When he got to Rachel's room, he found the other beds once again empty, though whether the other patients simply couldn't afford it or had been switched to another room, he would never know.
She was still out. It was too soon after the accident to even hope she would wake up yet.
Alec slid into the chair by her bed and placed her hand inside his where it belonged and leaned his forehead against the bed, with her arm brushing his head. Exhaustion overcame him as he slipped into his first sleep since the bomb.
XXX
Max just wheeled the bicycle with her down the halls of Harbor Lights. She had no idea where they'd stashed Rachel and she didn't know her last name, so she couldn't ask. Plus, everyone tended to mind their own business until they were approached with questions. It was a good way to make people curious without actually getting any answers.
She passed by Logan's door almost immediately. He was still out of it, but Max waved at him for the hell of it. But he wasn't Rachel's roommate anymore, he had the place to himself. All that old money working for him.
Rachel was in a little room in the corner of the building and she, too, was alone, except for the man curled over on his chair, his head resting against her side.
It didn't look comfortable and Max couldn't help wincing as she thought how tired Alec would have to be to fall asleep in that position. She would have found it impossible, but she hardly ever slept in the first place. The strangest thing about his position was actually his legs, the way his weight was on the balls of his feet even in sleep, as though he might need to spring from his seat without warning.
What the hell had happened to them?
Half of her wanted to move him to one of the empty beds. His neck would hurt like hell when he woke up if he stayed where he was. But if she woke him, there was no guarantee he could get back to sleep and he'd be wrecked for their little adventure that night. Maybe he needed to be close to Rachel, to assure himself that she was still there with him, at least physically speaking.
The girl looked awful. Worse than Logan and that was saying something. It was terrifying to think what might happen to Alec if she didn't recover. She seemed like his entire world.
Max sat on one of the other bunks in the room and lay back, looking up at the tiles. She hated it when people watched her sleep. Two very loosely termed boyfriends had had that unpleasant habit and she'd woken immediately, already on the lookout for a threat. Sure, it was unlikely Alec had the same instincts and training, but she wasn't about to do anything to distract from what precious sleep he could get.
XXX
Manticore's wake up buzzer was loud, unpleasant and impossible to sleep through. He'd been hearing it since before he could remember and Alec had an excellent memory. Even on the Berrisford mission, he awakened the same way he had every other day of his life, with a sudden lurch and pounding heart, ready for anything. The hospital hadn't changed anything. One second he was asleep, the next, awake and on his feet, taking in his surroundings as his memories flew back to him.
Rachel was on the bed in the same position he left her and the heart monitor flashed silently. The slight rise and fall of her chest were her only movements.
"Oh, good, you're up."
Alec spun immediately toward the new voice and it wasn't until he realized who she was that he started to breathe again. "Max. God, how did you get by me?"
"Uhh, you were unconscious?" As always, she didn't find him in the least bit threatening and lounged on the other bed almost lazily, one finger resting with the bicycle that leaned propped up against the mattress. She'd changed clothes and could have been anyone wandering the streets in a backwards baseball cap, pants that cut off just past the knees and old Nike sneakers.
"No. Yeah. Of course, I was asleep. Sorry." Alec could kill himself for half the shit he said to Max. Of course she wouldn't know that he was trained to be alert, even in REM sleep. She couldn't possibly be aware that it was usually impossible for him to sleep with another person in the room and it had only happened a few times, with other Manticore soldiers. Either his subconscious had decided she wasn't a threat, or Max was the most dangerous person he had ever met. But she didn't seem like a threat, she seemed safe, which only made him all the more paranoid she was actually a threat. "What are you doing here?" he asked.
"In the neighborhood, thought we'd go over everything now, save time later."
The burglary. Of course. "Do you always take a bike to your strategy sessions?"
"Well, I can't just leave it on the street. There's thieves out there."
A joke, he recognized. Because they were thieves themselves, planning a burglary. He tried to smile, to respond in what would be considered a normal human way. It failed miserably.
Max frowned and sat up slowly, the smile on her face melting as she watched him intently. Great. He'd fucked up. Again. "We don't have to do this now. You can sleep. I'm sorry," she said, hopping off the bed and wheeling her bike from the room.
He realized his reaction hadn't come off as weird, but perfectly natural, given the circumstances. Soon after the relief, though, was panic. It hadn't seemed fake because it wasn't. She saw his true emotions and was trying to be considerate of them. He really needed to start lying to this girl.
"I'm fine, Max. Let's just get this over with."
She didn't seem to buy it, but at least she went for it anyway, plastering a smile on her face as she pulled a chair up next to him. "Great!" she said and proceeded to actually pull the plans for the storage facility out of her shirt.
It was one of the most amazing things he'd ever seen in real life.
XXX
Max couldn't get Alec, or the mystery that was Alec, out of her head as she climbed up the stairs to her apartment for a pit stop. Obviously, he needed money. Someone was after him. He had no where to stay except his girlfriend's bedside and that girlfriend, Rachel's chart read Lucy Fulk.
Part of her couldn't help but judge him for his sloppiness in letting what Max assumed to be Rachel's real name slip, but the larger part of her understood what it was like, how difficult it was to lie about every little thing and why, when she'd met Cindy, she'd opened her mouth to give her a fake name, but "Max" popped out. Sometimes, it was just too exhausting to deal with. Even for someone like her.
"Honey, I'm home!" Max called as she walked through the door.
"Hey, Max," her friend Kendra walked through the beads she'd hung up on her doorway to give their apartment even more of a hippie look than it already had. "Chili on the stove. Well, really, more of a chunky tomato soup, but I choose to be glass half full. Or stomach half full, in this case."
"Sounds great. Was gonna meet up with the gang at Crash later, you in?"
Kendra knew the Jam Pony crew by association, but had so far avoided the pain and misery of actually working there with her excellent people skills. Mostly with men. She was convinced that knowing the right people was key to success in any walk of life, even, or especially, when the world is destroyed by an electromagnetic pulse. So far, she'd been proven correct.
"Sorry, got a friend in town," Kendra brushed off the invite.
"And by friend you mean...?"
"More than a friend. And by 'in town' I mean avoid the apartment or be forever scarred."
"Well, obviously I'll need the story when I get back." Max went back to the bedroom she rarely slept in, but housed all her belongings, and threw her black catsuit into a backpack next to her lock pick set and slim jim. Alec had assured her that he had everything he'd need as far as equipment went, though she suspected that they would probably be used for the first time that night. What kind of criminal didn't know how to argue a price with a fence? That he was out of his element was obvious, but why? If she didn't know better, she'd think he was an undercover cop. But, quite frankly, he wasn't a good enough liar. Plus, what about Rachel? She wasn't faking her coma.
He talked a good game and Max had no doubt he had broken in and out of many facilities by the time they were done planning, but it seemed like his knowledge and his experience were two different things, like he'd read a book about crime and was now trying to put it into practice.
It was a huge risk, bringing him with her, but it seemed too important not to do it.
XXX
"What's her angle, Rachel?" Alec asked, trying to get a handle on Max for not the first time that day.
Rachel ignored the question, of course, and even though he knew her expression hadn't changed in the least, it seemed more exasperated somehow, like she knew perfectly well what Max's deal was and he shouldn't be bothering her with these trifles again. It had to be his mind playing tricks on him, but he still stopped asking out loud.
The real issue ultimately boiled down to the fact that Max was way too nice. Which was weird, since she came off as kind of a bitch. Even in his imagination, she had an attitude. He could tell she felt sorry for him and it made him want to dangle her out the window and make her scared of him for two seconds, damn it. Unfortunately, she would probably just glance casually from the ground back to his face and ask him if he really had time for all the drama.
It would be a decent question.
He had the strange feeling that she might think of him as a child or a puppy, or something equally cute, ineffectual and in need of constant care. Quite honestly, he really could use all the help he could get, so why did it bug him so much?
"We can handle this on our own, right?" he asked.
Nothing. It was beginning to seem like Rachel was on Max's side.
XXX
Crash pumped with music as Max walked through the doors. The first thing she saw was Calvin "Sketchy" Theodore balancing on the front wheel of his bike. It was pretty impressive until he swung his head to check out a girl's ass and wiped out.
"If you just kept your eyes in your head you'd be able to stay up, fool." Cindy emphasized this with a half loving, half annoyed smack to Sketchy's fake leather jacket.
"Isn't that how you hit the floor yesterday?" Max asked as she walked up.
"Max! Welcome." Sketch grabbed a glass from the table and poured a beer from the pitcher. "Beer?"
"Always."
She was just sliding into her seat when her pager lit up. Since most of her friends were already at the bar, it had to be a business call, probably about the job that night. Jimmy, probably. Alec didn't have her pager number. Though, in hindsight, she should have given it to him.
It may have been surprising to anyone else, but at first she didn't recognize the number because it was 14 digits, like any telephone number, but began with two zeroes, so it couldn't be.
00332960073452
Max's stomach tightened and the hair stood up on the back of her neck, right where the other twelve digits of that very number were genetically attached to her skin in the form of a barcode. Quickly, and, she hoped, subtly, Max threw a glance around the room, trying to detect anything out of the ordinary. Neither of the pay phones in either corner of the bar were being used and the phone under the bar was being passed back and forth between two giggling girls that couldn't possibly be old enough to drink legally. Not that anyone cared. Max probably wasn't old enough herself.
"Boo?" Cindy tried to get Max's attention, but she was already at the bar, ready to rip the phone right out of the teenagers hands when she heard the laughter on the other end. Another girl around the same age. Most likely had nothing to do with the situation, just some kids that couldn't afford a cell.
"Could you hurry it up?" she bitched at them. Not like they were the only broke ass females in the city.
Belligerently, they continued talking, until Max's glare started to get scary and they quickly said their good byes and hung up. Right on cue, another phone number popped up on her pager. Not one she recognized but she'd hardly been expecting to. She made sure to throw in the blocking code before dialing the number from her pager.
She heard the click of a receiver. A land line, she noted, not a cell. "Hello, 452." A male voice.
"Is that supposed to be, like, my area code? I live in Seattle." It was worth a shot, though she wasn't putting any money on it. Maybe it would at least get him talking and she'd recognize his voice.
"Nice try, Max."
So he had her name and both her numbers. Who was he? "You wanted to talk to me, start."
"I'm blackmailing you. I have information about you that I could give to Colonel Lydecker, but if I have 30 large by, say, 4 am, I won't. Good deal, right?"
"Can't pull that kind of money that fast."
"Sure you can. You have super powers. Plus, if you don't or you decide to just jump ship, I'll just tell him about your friends instead. Like Logan Cale, for example. Really doubt he's in the right kind of shape to be moved anyway, plus it would be so much hassle. You'd be better off paying me."
"Or, you can tell Colonel Mustard whatever you want about whoever, cause your information is wrong."
"No, it's not. Call me when you have it." She heard the click of the receiver. Great.
XXX
It was almost possible to enjoy the tranquil boredom of waiting for Max in the alley across the street from their target, a five story black building that reflected all the light in the city. The problem, of course, was that he hated being bored. Sure, he'd practiced being still and having patience back at Manticore. In some operations, it was necessary to lie still for hours, waiting, but that didn't make it any less mind numbing. Really, the idea of doing it on his, for lack of a better term, vacation time, just made him that much more willing to eat a bullet instead.
Between his options of obsessing about Rachel and his own forthcoming, very likely horrible death, one might think Alec would rather just count the blood stains on the pavement. But he didn't get a choice, his mind skipped merrily around between all three without regard.
He was certain if he concentrated, he could find a way to blame it on Max. A glance at his watch, or rather, Rachel's doctor's watch, revealed that it was almost time. Max would be officially late in 8...7...
That was when he heard a low buzz crescendo into a loud roar that blew his hair back from his face as a black motorcycle rounded the turn into the alley and came to a sudden and complete stop in front of him.
"Oh good, you're here," Max said, as though he was the one who might not show. She knocked the stand on her bike into place and pushed a pair of yellow sunglasses back off her eyes. "Ready?"
No. He wasn't ready. He was staring at the monster that almost killed him. "Where did you get that?"
She smiled. "Wouldn't you like to know?"
"Steal it?"
"Never steal anything you want to keep, Alec. Burglary 101."
The one class they hadn't taught at Manticore.
"Give me three minutes," Max said, as she wheeled her bike behind a crate and locked a chain to both wheels. "Then come in through the side."
"Don't touch my bike!" She called back as she blew past him, digging through her backpack.
Bitch. It was only the most entertaining thing he'd encountered since leaving Manticore. But then, she didn't know he'd been locked up in a secret government facility all his life. Surely, if she knew, she'd be more than happy to let him play with her toy. Or, more realistically, be terrified because he was an assassin.
Either way, she just didn't have enough information to make the decision, so he would have to do it for her.
And he chose to run his hands all over the smooth black metal, plastic and leather of her Kawasaki Ninja 650.
Which was how he found the tracking device.
XXX
Max was a fast climber and it would have been completely possible for her to haul herself up the wall to the open window on the second floor. But really, she was just gonna jump. Maybe the lazy way to go, but it would take Alec at least two minutes to stop feeling up her bike, so there was no way he'd see it.
"What's this?"
She'd severely overestimated the time frame, Max realized as she turned toward Alec's voice. In his hand dangled a small black, spidery object.
"High frequency GPS micro transmitter," she answered, automatically. She was going to kill that blackmailing son of a bitch. Granted, she didn't like killing people, but he wouldn't know that. For all he knew, she collected skulls in her bath tub and she wasn't about to disabuse the notion when she got a hold of him. Let him look over his shoulder the rest of his life. Bastard.
"What's it doing on your bike?" Alec asked.
"Did I not just tell you not to touch my bike?" Okay, yes, she'd known he would, who could resist? But did he have to flaunt his wandering hands like every other man on the planet?
Beside the look of utter irritation that crossed his face, Alec ignored the question. "You have twenty seconds to explain this before I walk."
In the whirlwind of being blackmailed by an unknown entity, the fact that Alec was on the run from people and places unknown had slipped Max's mind. "I'm being blackmailed, okay? Has nothing to do with you."
"Says you."
It was easy to see where he was coming from. If he'd brought half the dramatic insanity to the table that she had, Max would walk too. Had already, in fact, when she left Logan to fend for himself. That didn't mean she was letting Alec get away with it. "God, you're a drama queen."
"I'm what?"
"If I wanted to find you. Or Rachel, or whoever's hiding. I did it. Hello, you're found. And no one that's after me even knows you exist, so chill. You want to make some money or bitch some more?"
"You don't even care that someone's tracking you?"
It explained how the blackmailer was getting his information. He knew about Logan and knew where she lived, but not Jam Pony. That whole crew was safe unless he'd trailed her to Crash. "I'm dealing with it. Just put that thing back on my bike and get your ass to other side of the building."
XXX
This was the first big score he'd had a chance at and if he walked away, he got nothing. "If this hurts Rachel, I will kill you," he promised.
The amusement that flickered in her large brown eyes was galling. "You can try."
"You think I'm kidding," he said. "I'm not."
Max just shrugged. "Neither am I."
He wanted to drop kick her into the next sector just to prove he could, but that would obviously jeopardize his goal of making a shitload of money. But there was always tomorrow.
Reluctantly, he rounded the building, dropped the tracker on the seat of her bike and trotted back to wait. Again.
XXX
Max was up the building the second Alec was out of sight. Hoisting herself through the window, she dropped to the ground before anyone off the street noticed her hanging off the windowsill. She'd been worried her blackmailer might be watching, somehow, but they were using technology to do that for them. Soon enough, they'd realize it was a huge mistake. Given what they knew about her life, it was surprising they weren't more worried that she would just kick their door down and kill them.
Another mistake.
Max slinked along the darkened hallways of what seemed like just a normal office building, but the carpeting had been long ripped out and the cubicle walling provided a second barrier on the wall. An extra guard from stray or aimed bullets. Graffiti marked the walls, but she didn't recognize a signature, which raised flags. She'd been all over the city as a messenger and she had a photographic memory. Gangs all tagged their territory with similar markings.
Either it was a group she'd never heard of or the place was set up to look like something it wasn't. Instinct said to turn and run, but there was the highly important issue of the money to consider.
That, and Alec was already freaking out about the job as it was. She couldn't just bail after she'd gave him the 'don't be a drama queen, get your ass to the other door' speech. Well, she could, but he really might try to kill her.
The problem was, it wasn't her ass on the line. It was his. The reason the job required two people was the security override required manual depression. Of the two jobs: Climbing the wall, breaking into the security room and opening the door had been assigned to Max. The problem with teaming up with a guy was they always felt the need to assign themselves the more dangerous stuff. Never mind that she was a hundred times more likely to be able to handle herself if the warehouse turned out to be guarded.
Max picked the lock on the security door, revealing a row of computers monitors connected to one large, buzzing machine. Every monitor showed a camera feed, but none were of the out doors. It looked like individual houses. Families.
The vast potential for evil struck her immediately, but she ignored it. This wasn't what she was there for. She didn't know what it meant. Quickly, she dropped her ass into the seat in front of the keyboard and brought up the security for the building.
XXX
Outside, Alec danced from foot to foot with nervous energy.
Had he really expected that his only contact in the criminal world wouldn't bring her own baggage? It wasn't like Max was the be all and end all of thieves. There was nothing stopping him from meeting more, though whether their lives would be any less crazy than Max's was another issue.
It was really only moments before the thick metal garage-like door opened. Alec didn't have time to think about the fact that Max was a hell of a quick climber before armed men ran from the building. He was on the move immediately. Four men, two groups of two.
And to think, he hadn't been having fun.
There was something about a real fight that was so refreshing. It wasn't the same at Manticore, battling it out with equals to try to gain some minor advantage. Every punch counted and anyone could win at the end of the day. Humans weren't even a hint of a threat. The men wouldn't even know what hit them when they woke up.
They could barely even see him, he moved so fast. The first pair were easy, a hit each and they were down before they knew where he was. He could hear the pop of gunfire in the night air. Running up the side of the wall, he pushed off the building, relieved the gun from one man and threw an elbow into the face of the other.
He admired the gun in his hand as finally came to a standstill, smiling. Forty millimeter HK with custom sights. It was made for someone who could hit a target and that someone was squinting at him in the dim light emanating from the inside.
"Sorry," Alec apologized. "Got ahead of myself."
As Alec tucked the HK into the back of his pants, it's owner threw a punch that may have hurt if it landed, but Alec grabbed the thug's arm as it went by and swung his body around to tuck the man's neck into a choke hold.
It took longer than a simple, crushing blow to wait for the guy to stop struggling and truly pass out, but it was a really nice gun.
The least he could do was not leave a mark.
XXX
They'd agreed on fifteen minutes, in and out. Open the door for two, wait thirteen as Alec grabbed the loot and open for another sixty seconds for him to clear the door before she climbed back down the wall.
So, for thirteen minutes, Max gave in to her morbid curiousity and searched through screen after screen of what was on the computer. The video uplinks to the monitors only scratched the surface. There was page after page of files, collected over a period of years. The people didn't seem to know they were being watched and other than the fact that they tended to be of a higher income bracket, the families in the video files were doing nothing special.
It felt off. It was too much trouble to be simple burglary, especially since they would have had to be in the house already to set the cameras in the first place, why not just clean them out then?
She wasn't there to solve the mystery. They were supposed to be hitting the storage housing of a local gang for a specific target. Easy in, easy out.
Max took a glance down at her watch. Thirty seconds. She looked around for disks.
XXX
The storage facility was massive, housing one of the best private weapons arsenal that Alec had ever seen. Granted, he was more accustomed to government facilities, so it wasn't like it was that impressive, but still. Gun racks circled the room. AKs on the top level. Sub-automatic toward the bottom. The rest of the room was filled with ammo, other munitions, vehicles and detonation devices. He didn't see any C4 on the premises, which was good, since the place would go off like a nuke if they weren't careful.
It looked like they were planning a revolution. Which, all things considered, not the worst idea, if they could offer something better than the current crap-ass government that Alec had spent his life suffering for.
The problem with the whole set up was he wasn't there for weapons or ammo. That didn't mean he wouldn't grab anything that caught his fancy, but what they were after wasn't military grade or he would have stayed about as far away from the job as possible.
He was looking for Gazgo!, a horrifically named, but very effective gas supplement discontinued in the late 90s. It was a tiny capsule that, when put into a gas tank, increased gas efficiency by ten. The downside, and the reason they stopped making it, was it didn't work if the temperature dropped past fifty below. It brought a school bus to a halt in Northern Michigan and the damn kids were a whole hour late. The lawsuit killed the company that owned the patent.
But in Seattle, temperatures hadn't gone that low in decades. Plus, anyone with a kid going to school sent them in a limo like the rest of the rich bastards. So given the gas shortage, Gazgo! was better than gold.
The reason for its presence in command central was probably the ten ton Humvees that seemed to be glaring at Alec from their place under the Uzis. Fat monsters probably guzzled seven capsules a day and still needed a refill, but that only meant there was a huge ass pay day just waiting for Alec to find it.
Really, it made it a lot easier to locate shit when there was no incentive to keep the room clean and no one to see him blur.
Of course, if he'd known that they weren't hiding it, and in fact, kept a massive bag next to the Humvee with the gas can, it would have been even faster.
But he wouldn't have found the sniper rifle.
XXX
Max's feet hit the street pavement only seconds before Alec turned the corner. "No problems?" she asked, trying to seem casual, like she hadn't just landed.
For just a second, Alec smiled. "Check it out," he said, turning his body to reveal the large bag hoisted over his shoulder.
"You bring me something, Santa? I've been a really good girl."
Alec just watched her as she stepped forward, hand outstretched. She'd been kind of going a joke route and she really wished he'd quit it with the serious act twenty-four seven. Not that he wasn't perfectly entitled, but God, what a downer. "Good to know," he said finally.
"What, that I know how to behave myself?"
"That you lie with a straight face," he corrected. "I know you can't behave for shit." He tried for a full deadpan, but the expectant twinkle in his eyes gave him away as he watched for her reaction.
She smacked him, earning a See? expression that made her laugh.
"I had deception training as a child," she explained. "Let's go."
