RATING: PG-13
SPOILERS: Designate This

AUTHOR'S NOTES: Sorry the last chapter was pretty short. This one is longer. Like I said before, no guarantees that chapter lengths will be consistent. I blame my muse.

Thanks to willow for pointing out some confusing sections of this chapter and helping me make them clearer.

I'm working under the assumption that Manticore's building in Gillette was not its only facility, or at least not its only office. I base this on several lines we've seen from the show, namely in Cold Comfort, AJBAC, and DT. If you want the specific lines, email me and I'll be happy to quote them for you.

I had to fudge a little in this chapter. As I've planned this fic, I've discovered all sorts of inconsistencies in the show that I never noticed before, and I have to figure out how to resolve them. When Logan makes his hack at the beginning of Designate This, it's apparent that it's the first Manticore hack he's ever made--but in it, he says Manticore consolidated "since these cable hacks began." After much thought, I chose to believe the former is true and not the latter. Hope you don't mind.

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"Will that be all, sir?"

"That's all."

Donald Lydecker took the coffee the clerk handed him, paid for it, and headed back out to his SUV. Three months later and this diner's coffee was still just as bitter as it ever was. Beggars couldn't be choosers, though--after all, he was in hiding and coffee was hard to come by these days. So he gulped it down as he thought about his next move.

He'd only just arrived back in town days before. True to form, he had prepared for resistance and difficulty reentering the city, but there had been surprisingly little. Renfro must have decided he was more valuable alive than dead, what with Eyes Only taking Manticore public. Lydecker knew Manticore's location. Renfro knew he knew. It was only a matter of time before she would try again to contact him. This time, he would let her.

Lydecker pulled out his cell phone and looked at the numbers on the list. While he had been planning to get Eyes Only's cooperation, he hadn't expected him to expose Manticore's existence quite so soon. Still, it wasn't necessarily disadvantageous. Making Renfro nervous and the Committee skittish were part of Lydecker's plan, after all, and he would enjoy watching them squirm.

Somehow he knew Logan Cale would too.

Lydecker had thought about Max all summer; he could only imagine what it was like for the man who was in love with her. Apparently Logan was just as consumed now as he was three months ago. Why else would he go after Manticore? They could cause him more trouble than he would ever know. His very life was in danger, wounding the animal before he was ready to kill it, and yet there were his eyes on TV. The man was driven.

Not that Lydecker could really blame him. He remembered the way he had felt about his wife when she was alive and the spiral he had taken after her murder. It had taken him a few years to get his head on straight and funnel his pent-up frustrated energy into something useful. Max had been one result of those efforts, and now Logan had lost her. Lydecker had to admire Logan's productivity only a few months later.

And now it was time to use that to his advantage. Lydecker scrolled down his phone's list of numbers, selected one, and dialed. He got a machine in response.

"No one's around. Leave a message."

Lydecker had really been hoping to talk to the man live, but this would do. "It's Lydecker. I see that you're...looking for Manticore's new location. I have some information you might find useful. I'll be in touch."

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Logan stared at the machine. Lydecker was calling him? Where the hell had he been all summer? Logan sure could have used him sooner to find Manticore. He'd figured Lydecker had gone to ground--after all, Max had said his boss wanted him dead in a big way--but somehow he was calling Logan now. Why couldn't he have called before?

Well, Logan would have to think about that later. Right now he was ready to chase down a lead.

If Manticore had stayed put in their Gillette location, it would be easy to expose them. He knew where that building was. Even if Max had never mentioned its location during their year together...even if he had never done research for their quid pro quo...he would always remember that awful night he had spent outside it three months ago. The problem was, Manticore had consolidated all their facilities into a secret location shortly after the raid, and he had no idea where to look for it.

As a result, he was concentrating most of his efforts on the Gillette area, figuring even a secret government agency would leave a trail somewhere. After checking records of every type--personnel, architectural, financial--of every large operation in the vicinity, he'd run across a V.A. hospital that was suspiciously well-funded. V.A. installations weren't given much attention after the Pulse, and Gillette didn't have an official military base. There was no reason for this hospital to have the money it did.

The hospital's finances dropped off sharply in early June--shortly after the raid on Manticore. Logan was positive that extra money had been going to Manticore instead of the hospital. And he figured that if Manticore's Gillette facility had been tied to V.A. financial records, he'd be willing to bet its branch facilities had been too--and so might its new location. What he needed now was something more concrete than just intuition.

Logan had tried to hack into the records of the V.A.'s Seattle office, but there wasn't much there. Either its records were mostly paper-based, or not every record was being kept that should have been. Logan actually suspected both; the Pulse had caused many places to start from scratch with paper records, and one of his basketball teammates had always complained about the difficulty in securing his checks at that office.

A year ago he would have thrown himself into righting that wrong. But now, somehow, it didn't seem as important that he do it himself. Finding Manticore was his priority now. Logan would go down to the V.A. office and follow its paper trail, and the S1W would be only too happy to take care of the office's corruption, if that was the reason for the database's holes.

As he looked through his closet, Logan dialed his cell phone. "Asha?"

"Yeah. Hey, Logan."

"Hey. Listen, Eyes Only and I need the S1W to do us a favor. A lot of vets will thank you too."

"I'm listening."

He told Asha about the plan, and they agreed to meet in an hour to put it into action. After hanging up, Logan changed clothes, putting on the exoskeleton along the way. Then he sat down in his wheelchair, trying not to think about the last time he had walked over to it. He didn't succeed, of course. Memories of their anniversary came flooding back.

Everything he did reminded Logan of Max. Even the camo vest he was wearing now made him think about the fatigues Max had been wearing the night of the raid.

Good way to remind myself why I'm doing this today, he thought to himself. As if I could forget.