Leash Laws

Summary: Max and Alec learn disturbing news that will affect all of TC. To make matters worse, a Familiar comes looking for help and they can't say no. Sequel to Loose the Hounds.

I completely forgot in all the recapping last chapter to say that if you're in the mood for an entirely original story, my new novel's up at Amazon, Glass Promises. You can follow the link on my homepage. It an adventure and a romance, dashing hero, brave heroine, the works.

Now, when last we spoke, there was a Familiar at the gates…

Chapter Two

"A Familiar?" Max asked, completely in shock. "Are you joking?"

"Did I mention a priest and a rabbi?" Mole nearly snarled. Clearly the thought of a Familiar asking permission to enter their territory was not good for his mood.

"Have you let him in?" Alec asked.

"Yeah, I brought him to Command and let him start thumbing through the files. We're just waiting on you to give him the key to the city."

"I get that you're angry, Mole." Alec stood and faced the other man head on. "Now quit growling and start thinking. We need to know what they're up to."

Max waited for the explosion, but as so often happened, Mole listened to Alec where he wouldn't to anyone else. Max never did understand how the two had formed their own little mutual appreciation society, but they had. She suspected it had started when Alec got himself shot trying to save Mole and the others at Jam Pony.

Mole gnawed on his cigar, then let out an annoyed grunt. "What do we do with him?"

Alec's lips quirked up. "Take him to one of the conference rooms. See what he has to say. Then we decide whether or not to kill him."

Mole cocked his head to one side as if considering it. "That's workable."

The conference rooms were in the building just inside the gates. It ensured a certain amount of security while interviewing people, as well as ensuring the person barely saw anything more of TC than what could be seen from the gates themselves.

"I'll get a full security detail together."

"Sounds good," Max said, standing to join Alec. "We'll be there in a minute. The guy can sit and stew for a while."

Mole grunted again and left, closing the door behind him. Almost immediately Alec turned and held his arms out. Max moved into them easily and allowed him to pull her close and wrap her in his warm embrace.

"I just got back," he said grumpily.

"Can't even give us a minute before disaster strikes, can they?" she answered just as grumpily.

He pressed a kiss to the top of her head. "Well, they can just wait."

Max pushed back slightly and studied his features for a moment. He looked a little tired, but she knew that was from the constant vigilance required by the bodyguard job he'd just finished. Compared to before, though, he was finally looking like his old self. The stab wounds and the gunshot had healed. More importantly, however, he was working through the self-imposed distance he'd put between them. She doubted he would ever forgive himself for shooting her, but he was trying to move past it. The deprogramming sessions to ensure he wouldn't hurt her or anyone else again had scraped him raw, and she knew he was still struggling with the results, but a lot of rest and the time needed to physically heal had done them both good. The rest would come eventually.

Alec tucked a lock of her hair behind her ear. "What do you think?"

"What do I think?" she murmured. "I think the Familiars are probably setting us up for disaster. Again. And it pisses me off."

"We'll stay ahead of them this time, no matter what they're up to," Alec said, suddenly sounding exhausted, much like he had before their forced convalescence. "There's no other choice."

Max looked him straight in the eye. "And as long as you don't make any dumbass moves that get you killed."

Alec scoffed. "You act like I purposely try to die."

At that, Max frowned angrily. "I know what you're willing to do when I'm in danger. Or worse, I know what you do when you think it's a lost cause."

Alec paled at the reminder of the shooting, followed by Max's poisoning. He'd been worse than frantic, he'd been broken, making his last stand and fully expecting to die in the process. Time and again, he'd ignored his own safety if it meant she would be protected. When she was in dire straits, there was nothing he wouldn't do.

Alec stood up straight and purposely put on an air of nonchalance. "Doesn't matter." He smirked. "Not gonna happen this time."

Max was about to give him a proper setdown when there was another knock on the door. "What?" Alec snapped, some of his agitation showing through.

The door opened a crack. "Can… can I come in?" Max realized it was Dr. Peterson and waved for him to enter. The twenty-something veterinarian looked even scruffier than he normally did as he nervously opened the door the rest of the way. "Is this a bad time?"

"No, it's fine," Alec said, carefully tamping down any negative emotions. Max had seen him do it often enough before, and it never failed to annoy her when he was hiding behind his Manticore mask.

"What can we do for you?" she asked. She rarely saw the veterinarian, especially since Alec had finally been given the all clear.

"Well…" The man wrung his hands nervously, which was very unlike him. He was normally very self-assured and didn't take crap from any of them. "This is… awkward."

Max pointed toward the chair sitting in front of the desk. She sat back down on the sofa and waited while Alec joined her and the vet turned the chair around so he could face them. Once Peterson was seated, he seemed to settle a bit, but he wasn't quite able to look at them.

"What is it?" Alec finally asked. "If you're worried about the equipment you asked for, we already gave Stat the okay for it."

"Yes and no." Peterson finally looked at them properly, and all Max could see was uncertainty and embarrassment.

"Look, whatever it is, just spit it out," Max said. "It won't be the first bad news we've had today." In truth, she was getting impatient. The Familiar was being escorted in and while she didn't mind making the guy wait a little, she wasn't comfortable with him on the grounds. They needed to talk to him and get rid of him. "Honest," she assured the vet, "whatever it is, you can tell us."

Dr. Peterson nodded. "It's just… I, uh… I'm really not sure how to tell you."

"Just tell us what's got you so upset," Alec said. "Plain and simple. If you're worried about saying medical stuff in front of us, we were all at Manticore. We're used to doctors talking about us like we're not standing right there while they discuss whatever weird thing our body is doing."

"Ok… good. I mean… not good. But… Ok…" The man cleared his throat, then took a deep breath to steady himself. "Most of you are probably sterile."

Max blinked, unsure she'd heard correctly. "I beg your pardon?" That certainly wasn't anything like what she'd been expecting.

"Sterile. You won't be able to have children."

"I know what the word means." Max tried to order her scattered thoughts and failed miserably. "I don't understand. Stat is pregnant. We have several pregnant females in the city." She glanced at Alec and saw that he seemed as confused as she was.

"Ok, let me take this from the beginning." The doctor stood up and began pacing back and forth. "I've been here for a while now, and I noticed, relative to the size of the population, an exceptionally high number of females coming to me with severe abdominal pain or cramps, sometimes with vaginal bleeding. It didn't take me long to figure out that the women were having miscarriages. At first I thought maybe it was because of the high toxin levels." He continued pacing furiously, and kept speaking, almost as if they weren't even in the room, and he was just thinking out loud to himself. Max was almost grateful. She was afraid to know what her expression looked like. She felt numb.

"If it was the toxins," Dr. Peterson continued, "I thought maybe the transgenic mother was immune, but maybe the fetus wasn't, or was too delicate to survive. A few tests, however, showed that wasn't the case. After that I started looking at other causes, physical characteristics of the mothers. I thought maybe there was some sort of abnormality, maybe a certain group of you had some physical issue that wouldn't allow a viable pregnancy. That wasn't the case either. There is such a variety in the population. Cats, dogs, amphibians, reptiles, bears, birds, insects… And these women were from all different groups."

"So what's causing it?" Alec asked, making the vet's head snap up in surprise when he remembered he had an audience.

He came back to his chair and sat down again. "It's your DNA."

"What about it?"

"Ok… It's like mules."

Max frowned, once again thrown by the odd direction the conversation had taken. "Mules?"

"A mule is the offspring of a horse and a donkey, which for all intents and purposes is always sterile."

"But… we're…" Max stammered, completely off kilter.

The veterinarian ran his hand through his already disheveled hair. "Normally, this isn't a problem. Humans having babies with humans, dogs with dogs, cats with cats, birds with birds… there are differences in varieties, a terrier and a poodle for instance, but it's all the same species, so when there are issues, it's something else causing the infertility, hormonal problems, physical defects, etc. But… maybe it's because I'm a vet that I realized it, but I think this is because you're all basically a hybrid of a human and another animal. Breeders do it to produce a stronger animal, or an animal for a particular purpose, but they'll only get one."

"But… the breeding program," Max blurted out, not daring to look at Alec. They had never talked about it and she certainly didn't want to start now, but it had just slipped out. "We were all supposed to…"

Dr. Peterson nodded. "Yes, one of the others told me about it, and explained a bit. From what I can tell, Manticore knew every single bit of your DNA, far better than I will ever possibly understand. They must have very carefully analyzed each one of you to ascertain who would be a viable breeding pair." He held up a hand. "And don't think just saying that doesn't give me the creeps." The man shook his head. "Anyway… I've talked to quite a few people, and from what I can gather, many of you were in the breeding program, but just looking around you should be able to see the lack of results."

Max nodded, mentally going through the population of TC. While she would like to think there were so few babies being born because their people had refused to obey orders, she knew that was doubtful. Manticore didn't allow disobedience. She and Alec… there had been more going on than just the breeding program when he was sent to her cell. The others, however, they would have had no such chance. They had sex with whoever they were paired with or they were punished. Yet, there were still few babies running around Terminal City.

"Originally, in order for Manticore to make you guys, the DNA was unnaturally forced, if you'll forgive the phrase. Manipulated is probably better. Once they had to use natural means to produce another generation, however, my guess would be that even with all of their knowledge, it was unlikely that the match would produce a pregnancy, let alone a fetus that could be carried to term. The genetic differences were just too great. And now… that you're all choosing your own partners… the odds are so low…"

Max didn't look at Alec, but she felt him grasp her hand and squeeze it, although she wasn't sure whether he was offering reassurance, or asking for it. Either way she squeezed his hand tightly in return.

It made sense now that the vet spelled it out. They were all made in test tubes because humans and cats couldn't exactly have kids. Or cats and fish. Or bears and insects. Asking transgenics to have a child naturally was basically asking for just that. It was asking the impossible.

Dr. Peterson ran his hand over his face distractedly. He stood and began pacing again. "Be that as it may, that's why I asked for the equipment I did. We have a couple of pregnant females right now. Stat is the farthest along, and the baby is in distress."

"What?" Alec asked. His grip became so tight it would have crushed a normal woman's fingers.

"Stat is ok, but the baby… I want this baby to make it. I'm tired of telling women they've lost their child, even if they didn't know they were going to have one. I need the equipment. If I had my way, I'd also want a human doctor, preferably an obstetrician in here ASAP as well as a geneticist, or a genetic counselor. I do the best I can, but…" His smile became abashed. "For this? Knowledge of animal husbandry will only get me so far. I'm already pushed beyond my limits trying to deal with humans anyway. Well… semi-humans."

"We'll get it," Max stated confidently, determination like she'd rarely felt washing over her. "Whatever and whoever you need, we'll get it." She honestly had no idea how, but if she could manage it, then she would. This… this tragedy that they called their lives… this was more than should be asked of anyone. Manticore had done enough to them. This was too much.

"Thank you. I… I've been trying to figure something out on my own, but I can't. There's just no way, and all of you needed to know. This is going to affect all of you, after all."

"Ok." Alec stood abruptly and gave the veterinarian a friendly slap on the shoulder as if to signal the end of the conversation. "Can we come talk to you again a little later? We have a meeting we have to get to."

"Sure." Dr. Peterson nodded, then let out a laugh, although it held no mirth. "My guess is you need a little time to digest this." He headed for the door, looking like the weight of the world was on his shoulders. "Just come hunt me up when you want to talk."

They waited for the door to close behind him, then Max turned toward Alec. "I just have one question."

"What?" He turned toward her, his gaze wary.

"Were you really my breeding partner or were you just supposed to make sure I infected Logan?"

More soon…