DISCLAIMER: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement was intended.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: I know, I know. I haven't been updating as fast lately. Blame it on my husband. He bought me World of Warcraft recently. That game is the most addictive thing I've ever played. Its crazy! Lol I promise to try harder to update in a more timely manner. :) On the plus side I should have the next chapter of the Wooing of Max up today and the one for Dark Angel Alphabetically tomorrow. :D Go me. lol

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Max was too tired to fight them when they came into her cell an hour before dawn. Every morning for three months she'd been dragged out of there kicking and screaming, struggling every step of the way to PsyOps and every morning the fight had proven useless. She wasn't resigned to her fate, far from it, but the exhaustion she felt, mental and physical, was enough to convince her that she needed to save that energy, horde it, so that she could combat their attempts to extinguish her personality. There was a smugness in the expressions of the guards as they hauled her, unresisting, out of her bunk but they were cautious too. All the X series had been trained to resist torture, they weren't stupid enough to think that she'd given in so easily.

Her decision not to waste her energy lasted until she saw the chair. It was, all things considered, an innocuous looking thing, sort of like something you would have seen in a dentist's office, but the pain they inflicted once you were strapped in was worse than anything Max had ever imagined. She fought against the guards but she was weak. They fed her only enough to keep her alive and day after day of this sort of treatment had taken its toll. Brutal hands shoved her into place and tightened the restraints. Fear welled up inside of her at the sight of the lab tech that stepped forward. She was young, in her early twenties, with blond hair and brown eyes. She looked like a strong breeze would break her in half but she made Max quake with fear. Well, not the girl herself really, but rather what she was about to do, what Max was powerless to stop. The girl leaned forward, face impassive and slid a needle into Max's arm. The X-5, normally so strong and full of attitude started to cry. Within seconds the drug was racing through her veins, she could trace the course it took because every where it went it brought white hot agony with it, in less than a minute Max was screaming in pain. And then they stepped forward and used a clamp to force her eye open. They turned on the laser, sending a steady stream of propaganda into her and her screaming died and she was only able to make a choked sobbing noise in its place.

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If anyone had told Ben that his return to Manticore was more pleasant and less painful than his sister's he would have cheerfully called them a liar and snapped their necks. As far as Lydecker was concerned, 493 was broken. They didn't need to bend him to their will the way they were doing with Max, he was far more pliant. No, they didn't need to break him but there was plenty of work to be done to fix him.

When Ben taken out of his cell, he didn't fight. He couldn't fight. The team that had been assigned to work on him were all creations of Manticore like himself, not a human in the bunch. They were empaths and specialists in telecoercion. His real tormentor was 792, a boy, 7 or 8 years old at the most, who had the ability to wipe a mind clean and start from scratch. He didn't do that with Ben though, Command didn't want him to lose all of the training he'd received or the things he'd picked up after he escaped. Instead 792 was riffling through his head, picking out the memories associated with his psychosis and altering them one at a time. It was far more precise than his usual work and his first few attempts had been ham handed at best . His lack of experience had made them more painful than they needed to be. Once he got the hang of things however, the pain intensified rather than decreased. They'd all been taught to hate the '09'ers. Rats, traitors, poison. It had been drilled into them over and over. And 792 saw an opportunity to punish 493 and took it joyfully.

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Brin had been a model soldier since she'd been cleared to return to duty. She'd followed every order, completed every mission but the knowledge that there were two members of her family back at Manticore was throwing her off her game. She had to find out which of her siblings had been captured, not knowing was driving her crazy. It had been three months since the capture and the gossip she'd heard gave no indication that her siblings would be allowed to return to duty any time soon. That was why she found a way to sneak out of her cell that night, it was why she crept along the halls and made her way down to the basement.

She heard footsteps and ducked around a corner, peering out cautiously only to find herself face to face with a pair of hazel green eyes that looked all too familiar. She gasped but the sound was stifled as he placed his hand over her mouth. 494, twin of her brother Ben, model soldier until a failed mission a few short months before had landed him in psy ops, was creeping down to the basement too. He hated the '09'ers, he'd made that clear the few times they'd been partnered together for sparring, so Brin couldn't help but wonder what he was up too.

He released his hold on her mouth once she'd indicated that she wouldn't make a sound and they began a rapid fire conversation in the hand signals they'd all learned as children. He wouldn't explain why he was there but they began to make their way forward, together.

They found one of her sisters first and the sight of her brought tears to Brin's eyes. She'd lost far too much weight, she was battered and bruised, her hair was lank. In truth she looked half dead. If her lips hadn't been moving, saying the same thing over and over, Brin would have thought she was staring at a corpse.

"What's she saying?" 494 asked in a barely audible whisper, making Brin jump. He'd never spoken to her of his own volition before. His Manticore mask was firmly in place but she thought she heard something, pity maybe, in his voice.

"She's saying Max." Brin replied, eyes filling with tears. At least she knew which of her sisters it was.

"Why? That a boyfriend or something she had on the outside?"

"No, that's her name."

"Name? We don't have names. Only designations."

"599," Brin began, not sure why she was bothering to explain, "and 493 decided when we were children that we should have names. All the guards, commanders, even the civilians had them. 493, Ben, named her Max. She was one of the youngest of our unit but she was always so determined, she tried so hard at everything. Ben said she pushed herself and us to the max." Brin found herself smiling softly at the memory but the smile slipped away when she glanced at the soldier beside her.

"Doesn't surprise me." He said curtly. "You're all a bunch of traitors. What's one more act of insubordination?"

His voice had risen in disgust and Max's eyes opened and rolled slowly to meet his.

"Ben?" She whispered brokenly even as her eyes began to shine with love.

494 felt his breath catch. No one, not even Rachel, had looked at him like that before. He wanted to be angry at her for confusing him with his twin but he couldn't find it in him.

"Shh," the sound he'd intended to be a harsh warning to be quiet came out as something much more soothing. It made her smile and he found himself saying it again, "Shhh..."

"Ben always called her Maxie." Brin supplied, surprising herself again.

Memories of his own time in Psy Ops flooded 494 and he felt something he'd never expected to feel for an '09er, concern. His mouth opened of its own volition, "Shhh Maxie, it'll be okay. Just hold on, the pain can't last forever." He found himself giving her his own secret weapon, the thing that he'd told himself over and over, to make it through, that the pain had to end sometime.

"Love you Ben." He heard her say, a heartbreakingly sweet smile on her lips just for him...for Ben, as her eyes drifted shut. Turning he noticed 734 staring at him with a small smirk on her lips. He started to scowl.

"Maybe its genetic." She said.

"Genetic?" He growled back.

"Yeah, genetic. Ben always did everything in he could to make her smile. Looks like you've got the same urge." Her laugh was tinkling, happy but not really mocking. He watched a look of realization slid over her features, as she concluded that if Max recognized 494 as Ben's twin..., "Ben, he's the other one they recaptured?" She asked, eyes wide.

"Got it in one." 494 told her snidely.