"I can't have sex any more Alec" Max pleaded with her partner of the past five hours. "It's starting to hurt too much."

"Just another sec," Alec grunted ruthlessly, dripping with sweat he pinned her arms down and ejaculated for the fourteenth time that evening. He collapsed on top of her, they had been copulating on the reception counter alone for what seemed like an eternity.

"Are you okay?" he asked her concerned. He picked up an old piece of blotting paper and wiped his face with it.

"I'll live," shrugged Max lying back "I enjoyed everything but the last eight minutes, you were too rough."

"Well why didn't you tell me then?" Alec barked at her. "I'm not encoded with telepathic DNA, remember?."

"I kinda thought 'Alec, ow no' was a big hint." Max told him crossly, graciously allowing him to rest on her chest.

"You said that?" Alec frowned puzzled. "Maxie, I'm sorry, I was so caught up…"

"Yeah I noticed." Max informed him with a mixture of awe and revulsion.

"I've never got off before so many times with anyone, I didn't know I could." Alec reflected amazed, kissing her shoulder gently.

"No more!" Max said alarmed, she shoved him off the counter. Alec thanks to his transgenic DNA landed perfectly upright instead of face first in the dust.

"Well excuse me, Maxie." Alec said, folding his arms defensively his upper lip curling. "I was merely kissing you in affection seeing we've known each other ten months, and you just let me ejaculate somewhere inside your body fourteen freaking times."

"Affection huh?" Max looked at him defensively. She looked downwards at his groin and raised her eyebrows sceptically.

"I wasn't gonna do anything," Alec snapped at her. "Believe it or not I'm getting sore too." He picked up his towel. "Geez, I just wanna bath!"

Alec went to walk out the doors of the deserted factory and then glanced back at Max still lying naked on the imitation marble counter. In the dawn's early light he could see fresh bruises and scratches coming up all over her body. Her chin was so grazed by his stubble it looked like she'd fallen on gravel.

Alec walked over to her. "Get up." He ordered his pal turned unexpected bed buddy. "I'm not having you stagger out after me like some rape victim. It'll be bad for everyone's morale."

"Can you ever stop thinking like some damn soldier." Max sighed getting painfully off the bench. Alec grabbed her to support her so he coul.d help her out the door.

The fates, Max's usual friends, made them run bang smack into Logan as she rounded a corner.

Logan was picking up edible weeds to put into a bag. He looked at her Max's sex inflicted wounds in the summer dawn and dropped his plastic bag in shock.

"Hey Max", Logan whispered in helpless despair.

Max was stricken with guilt to see Logan's eyes fill with tears of pity for her.

Alec was acutely embarrassed. He had never laid a hand in anger on a sexual partner before this and now it looked liked he had beaten Max in some Jack Daniels inspired frenzy. The marks on Max were looking incredibly ugly on her pink towelled body in dawn's increasing light, especially the bruise bite marks, and Alec wanted to get clothes on her as soon as possible. This was a definite reversal of his normal thoughts about her during their Jam Pony days.

"Logan it's not that bad. It's not Alec's fault. Some of these marks are from when I … " Max trailed off piteously not being able to tell Logan she had had sex with Zane the night before someone she had always thought of as a brother. Why the hell would Logan want to know the gory details? What was wrong with her brain?

"You're limping, Max." Logan said looking in disgust at Alec. Alec felt like the scum of the Earth remembering Logan telling him to take care of Max.

"Oh that ha ha." Max began weakly about to make up some crap lie about glass in her foot. Then Max thought the hell with it.

"Look everything you see on my body I wanted Alec to do to me." Max said leaning onto Alec harder. "We're over, Logan, deal with it."

Alec and Max walked off heads held high. They rounded the corner. "Okay," gasped Max grimacing in pain. "Carry me the rest of the way, I can't walk."

Alec looked at her embarrassed. "If I pick you up I'll get another erection and it'll show through the towel, people are starting to move about."

Max hit him on the side of his head with a satisfying wack. "Blur then!" she shrieked. "I think I tore a hamstring back when we were screwing on top of that filing cabinet."

Alec smacked her back with an equally satisfying wack. "Stop hitting me Max!" he snarled dangerously. "Just you shut up for once.",

Max put her hand to her head in disbelief to where Alec had hit her. Max bit her lip to stop herself from ripping Alex limnb from limb – because every transgenic was needed for the cause.

Max put her hands on her hips instead. "I feel filthy and dirty and I just want to stand under a hot shower and wash you off me."

Alec held his hands up to show her he meant no harm, and kissed her on an unmarked bit of her face. "I know, baby." He sympathised. "I can't stand having the thought of all this gunk covering me from you as well."

Max decided not to make an issue of Alec calling her baby after all as he had sensitively pointed out to her earlier she had let him ejaculate in or on some part of her body fourteen times last nigh,t this must mean they were going steady or something.

The morning briefing meeting was briefer than normal. Mole and Dix did their best not to stare at Max and Alec who were wearing dusty white lab coats the only clean spare clothing in the city. Dix sneezed, he was sensitive to dust.

Max and Alec were both surly and Mole stopped the meeting early. There were far less X5s in the control room than normal a fact Max noted as Alec let her lean his weight on him again.

"Come back to my room, Max." he urged her.

"I said I don't want to have sex anymore." Max told him firmly.

"I just want your company." Alec told her beseechingly. "We can just sleep together we don't have to do anything." He waved at Sketchy walking past them.

"I don't believe it when ordinaries feed me that line, even less you!" Max sniped.

"Stop believing the worst of me all the time!" Alec went to shake her then stopped himself. "Look I just want you where I can see you. I promise I'll leave you alone."

A young male X6 went over to them. "Are you alright, Max?" he asked her.

Max beamed beatifically at him. At last someone nice, not the bastard that was 494.

Alec loomed over the hapless teenager. "Get out of our way, kid." He said coldly.

Sketchy observed this behaviour from the corner of the control room and was troubled. Even more so when he looked out the window and saw that Alec was physically dragging Max by her wrist to go back to his room. Sketchy observed Max slapping Alec hard across the face and pointing to her leg, Alec yelled something at her and started kissing Max on the mouth. Sketchy clutched the window frame in disbelief as Max slid her hands round Alec's neck and began kissing him back. Alec picked Max up and carried her towards the direction of his room.

"Okay" Said Sketchy to O.C. at midday as he watched the older girl use her allocated water ration for clothes washing "I am officially confused."

Original Cindy paused in her wringing out of her one spare set of clothes. "How so, Sketch?"

"We've known Max for two years right? This sex all day marathon she's having with Alec is all completely out of character for her and even for Alec." Sketchy considered worried.

"O.C. has always observed and shared that Alec was a dog with the ladies." Original Cindy commented sourly.

"Yeah, but both he and Max stink!" Sketchy pointed out. Did you get a whiff of them at breakfast?" Sketchy pressed home his point. "Alec would always shower in the Jam Pony shower if he hadn't been able to make it home from a girlfriends place. He always washed after sex."

Original Cindy made a face at Sketchy's prurience. "Well none of us smells that great, fool, at the moment."

"Yeah, but Max always used to smell extra nice." Sketchy pointed out. "Didn't you and her old room mate Kendra joke about her bath obsession ,her scented bath salts or whatever?"

"Not sure where you're going with this, Sketch." Original Cindy said shaking her clothes on a communal piece of rope to dry. "Our boo's scratching her itch with pretty boy. Max's trying to get over Logan who is the love of her life. It's tragic is what it is. You're just being gross."

"O.C., stop thinking like a girl for once." Sketchy reasoned with her bravely. "Where are all the X5s today?"

Original Cindy looked around puzzled, now that Sketchy had mentioned it the streets were rather quiet in Terminal City today.

"I tell you where." Sketchy said. "They're holed up in rooms having sex or they're physically fighting each other."

O.C shook her head and pointed at a pregnant X5 woman and her male unit mate friend. "They're not."

"They had a bath yesterday night." Sketchy pointed out. "The X6s and X5s you see on the streets today had baths."

Original Cindy stared at him intrigued "You told me you were confused but O.C. is confused because she thinks Sketch is going somewhere with this, spill fool."

After Sketchy had explained his theory to Original Cindy she made him tell Mole and Dix.

Immediately upon hearing Sketchy's theory, Mole and Dix called in the rest of the important transgenic from the X5's and X6s. Once gathered, everyone sat down and made plans.

Back in Alec's room Max was loosing her voice from crying out so much during sex.

"I didn't hurt you?" Alec checked with Max lowering her gently back on the floor from the desk they had been using.

Max shook her head, her greasy sweaty hair falling away from her eyes. "No. My leg is getting better. I want a drink of water."

She hopped over and drank the boiled rain water in a bottle near Alec's bed. "I need to pee.' She stated flatly.

"I'll come with you." Alec told her quickly.

"I can make it down the hall without your aid." Max frowned looking for the lab coat.

"I'll come with you, I need to go too." Alec informed her crossly.

"You're suffocating me!" Max screamed at him. "I want to go to the freaking can by myself."

"Just shut up and do what you're told!" Alec yelled at her back.

Max took a big gulp of rainwater and Alec put his hand over her mouth. "Don't even think of spitting that at me." He instructed her in an angry command. "I'm sorry I spoke to you like that but I need to use the john too, for real."

Mole and Dix walked in to their room. Max pulled her tattered lab coat round her tightly.

"What?" Alec and Max snapped simultaneously.

"We need to talk to both of you urgently and then we're meeting Clemente in two hours but we've arranged separate baths for you first." Mole told them.

Both Max and Alec's faces lit up and they smiled happily at each other.

"I don't care about the privileges of power." Max laughed with joy. "I just want to wash and wash."

"God, me too" Alec agreed reverently "I'll just walk you to the restroom."

Half an hour later saw Max and Alec sitting around a table in Terminal City's control room freshly washed and dried in clean clothes borrowed from Sketchy and Original Cindy, whom to their surprise were also present at the meeting.

The two X5's both looked cheerful again although occasionally Max would shoot Alec an embarrassed look and Alec would look at Max speculatively.

Mole sucked on his cigar. Clemente had kept Mole supplied during the past month to keep him malleable just as he had supplied the shampoo sample bottles and soap cakes that morning.

"Okay, we need to tell you something important about you X5s that we've just worked out." Mole said curtly. "Dix, you explain."

"What! It was the ordinary's theory." Dix said passing the buck along further "Sketchy, over to you."

Sketchy looked embarrassed. "Remember my fellow ex Jam Pony buds don't shoot the messenger." He drew breath and Original Cindy nodded at him encouragingly.

"The lack of baths has made you X5s and to a lesser extent the X6s behave very out of character recently and it started when we ran out of soap last week." Sketchy went on. "At Manticore you guys and the X6s got to shower every morning and immediately after you got sweaty training, right?"

Max and Alec nodded in agreement. So what, what was Sketchy's point?

"Yeah well, people constantly give off pheromones and with you guys smelling of your own sweat you all have started to act like panthers." Sketchy said. "That's why you've all been more aggressive with each other and everyone else, you wanted territory space, black panthers aren't social, my friends. It's also why all the females have been acting like pole dancers and the males closest to them have been fighting off the other men, so they could make sure no one else impregnated their girlfriends."

"Impregnate," stammered Alec looking sick "Oh my god, no."

"Chill, man, you have seventy two hours for the emergency contraception pill." Sketchy reassured them, And once you guys meet Clemente and the governor and sign one last form one last form the siege is ended, we have a drugstore standing by with emergency contraception for everyone who wants it."

"Oh I want it," burst out Max. "Do you think I wanna be pregnant with that control freak's child?"

"I'm not normally like that." Alec said hurt. "I knew you'd sneak off with someone else if I wasn't with you." he shook his head. "Oh boy we really weren't thinking straight were we?"

"No." said Max covering her face with her hands, blushing with shame. "Oh god this is worse than heat."

And so it was the forms were signed, the transgenics of terminal city gave a shout of joy, all the X5's and X6's were given cakes of Soap and told to wash the second they emerged in public and Mr Bashir proprietor of Bashir's Drugstore did a roaring trade that night.

Alec watched Max pop the foil off the medicine gulp down two pills and handed her a can of soda to wash them down.

"The end huh?" Alec said to her.

"Absolutely" Agreed Max.

"Could I take you out to dinner? I'll call a Taxi I can see you're still limping." Alec offered.

"As closure that would be real nice." Max approved.