Lunch wasn't quite as tense as breakfast had been, but it wasn't relaxed either. Dean wasn't sure how many more meals he could go through like the last two without developing an ulcer. He was startled out of his train of thought by Alec clearing his throat and addressing Bobby.

"Would it be okay if I took a shower?"

"Sure you can, boy. Towels are in the closet by the bathroom," Bobby informed him.

"Dean, why don't you see if you've got anything Alec can wear until someone can go into town and get him some clothes of his own," Sam suggested.

"I can just put these back on," Alec interrupted. "It's no big deal."

"Sort of defeats the purpose of a shower, though," Sam reasoned, smiling as Alec scowled at him.

That particular scowl always made Dean look all of five years old, and on Alec, it just made him look like a particularly pissed-off kitten.

"No, Sam's right." Dean wrinkled his nose in thought. "I'm just trying to remember if I have anything that's clean. I was going to start some laundry last night, but I got sidetracked," he admitted, grinning over at Alec's disgruntled look.

"Your clothes are in the dryer, I did them while you were outside," Sam informed his brother.

"Awesome!" Dean stood up and stretched before pointing at Alec. "I'll have you some clothes outside the door for you."

Dean ruffled his brother's hair as he passed. "You are the best wife ever."

Sam ducked away from his brother, rolling his eyes. He glanced over at Alec, watching the kid frown at this interaction.

"Don't mind us, it comes from living inside each other's pocket all our lives. We'll go into town as soon as you're ready."

"You don't have to go to any trouble," Alec stated, still unsure of his position among these men and what they could possibly want from him.

"We've got to go get Bobby some groceries anyway. You need the basics end of story, even if I was willing to let you manage, which I'm not, Dean wouldn't. Now go on and take that shower, Dean can be a real mother hen given the chance."

"Whatever man," Alec grumbled.

Bobby snorted when Sam heaved a sigh. "Not as easy as Dean makes it look is it?"

Sam shot the older man a glare. "Man, I'm trying here. Dean's had a hell of a lot more experience at this shit. It would help if we knew exactly where he came from and who's after him. I feel like I'm walking a tight rope."

"I understand, but you don't want to be regretting any decisions made in haste either. We all have enough regrets to be adding to them when there's no cause. I'm already working on some things, maybe I'll have some answers when ya'll get back." Bobby patted his shoulder as he walked past.

The ride into town was mostly quiet. Dean kept the music low in case Alec decided he had something to say, but one of them were surprised when that didn't happen. There wasn't a second-hand store, the town being too small to support one, but there were a couple of decent shops with low prices. The boys always used their cash when they were in town because everyone knew they stayed with Bobby, and you just didn't use fake credit cards that close to home.

Alec stopped just inside the door. Dean took one look at Alec's face, grabbed a pair of jeans and a flannel shirt, and told him to go try them on. Sam snickered at the ugly look Alec shot his brother before he headed to the dressing room Dean had pointed at. Dean completely ignored him and started grabbing articles of clothes, sending Sam in search of a heavy coat for the kid. By the time Alec came out of the dressing room, Dean had a decent size stack of items at the register and was inspecting footwear.

"Why did you tell me to try this stuff on if you already knew what size I wore?" Alec asked, confused.

"You look like you were overwhelmed so it was the easiest way to get you doing something," Dean answered, never looking up from the boots he was checking over.

Alec put the jeans and shirt with the rest of the clothes. "You know, I really don't need this much stuff," he grumbled.

Dean glanced over at the register where the clerk was grinning. "Airline lost his clothes," He said in answer to the girl's unstated question.

She smiled as she started ringing up the items. "Brothers, they're always so grumpy."

Sam had been watching from the coat section and couldn't help startle at the clerk's assumption. It wasn't that he hadn't thought it himself, but to hear someone else put it into words was a little jarring. Even if Alec was a clone, which was honestly the only thing that made sense to him, if the boy wasn't a shifter, Alec shared genetic material with them so that made him family in one way or another. He finally settled on a coat and grabbed a couple of hoodies on his way back to join Dean by the shoes. His brother glanced at the hoodies, rolling his eyes and then over at the coat in his hands and nodded.

"Did you get the coat a size larger?"

"Yes, Dean," Sam answered with exaggerated patience, glancing over at Alec. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad having someone else that Dean could mother-hen around.

"Is he always so bossy?" Alec whispered when Sam came to stand beside him.

"Yeah, you'll get used to it," Sam whispered back.

Alec wasn't too sure about that, but he couldn't argue with the fact that it felt good to have someone give a damn about him outside of what he could do for them.

The ride to the grocery store took less than five minutes, but Alec still hadn't prepared himself for actually being in one, shopping for clothes had been bad enough. He'd never admit it, but Dean taking over had been a relief.

He'd had plenty of training classes, and seen videos on a multitude of different 'normal' things so that he could acclimate when he actually went on missions. Problem was, he had no practical experience.

All his training had stopped without explanation when he'd been shuttled off to the basement and left at the tender mercies of the lab rats. No one would tell him what was going on, so over the course of several months, while pretending to still be unconscious after some of the procedures they put him through, he'd found out that he'd been a twin and his brother for lack of a better word, had gone off the reservation.

It hadn't taken him long to realize that the only way he was getting out of there alive was to find a way to escape. His twin had apparently killed a couple guards, and several civilians. There was no way they would take a chance that whatever genetic flaw had been in his twin wasn't in him as well. Once they finished tearing him apart they'd terminate him, and he had no desire to die.

"Hey kid, you still alive back there?" Dean's voice shook him out of his memories.

Alec slid out of the car, following the two men into the brightly lite store. He trailed behind Sam as he pushed the cart, watching Dean as he moved from aisle to aisle, placing things in the basket with quick precise movements.

The only time their momentum slowed was when they moved to the bakery, and then it stalled completely in the front of the pie case. Alec couldn't help the tiny smile from creeping across his face as Dean's lit up.

"I'll be at the chips when you finish communing with your pie." Sam grinned at Alec, rolling his eyes as he headed to the other end of the aisle. Alec shuffled up beside Dean, peering into the case to see what was so important. He eyed the different confections, seeing no real difference since they all had filling and some had toppings on them.

"So what's your favorite kind?" Dean asked without looking away from the display.

"Don't know," Alec mumbled.

"What do you mean don't know? Like, you can't make up your mind don't know?" Dean glanced his way.

"No, I mean I've never tried any," Alec answered.

Dean jerk his head around and stare at him horrified. "Seriously?"

Alec answered him, looking back at the pies. "What kind do you like?"

Dean continued to stare at him for another few seconds before he glanced back at the case. "I like them all. I usually get cherry or apple, they're the one's we usually find at the diners, but chocolate cream is awesome too."

Dean reached into the case to grab all three flavors before adding lemon and pecan to the basket.

Sam ambled back over, stopping short when he was about to throw the bags of chips into the cart. "Dean do we need to have another intervention?" He asked as he eyed the five pies.

"No." Dean shot him an ugly glare.

"The boy's never had a pie. That's like criminal, we have to rectify that immediately!"

"By sending him into a diabetic coma?" Sam asked still looking at the containers piled up in the basket.

"Bite Me," Dean grumbled.

"Not right now, too public," Sam shot back before his brain could catch up to his mouth. He spun towards Alec, trying to ignore his brother gaping at him.

"You should feel privileged he's planning on sharing. Usually, you'd lose a hand if you tried to get his pie," Sam told a confused Alec.

Alec just nodded his head, looking between the two brothers, trying to figure out what was going on. When no one seemed to be inclined to explain, he shrugged and followed a bewildered Dean to the cash register, with Sam trailing behind them.

Dean was quiet on the ride back as he listened to Sam answer questions that Alec was asking about what they did for a living and why they did it. Alec seemed much less shocked than most people and it left Dean with even more questions about the kid than he already had.

He wasn't surprised when Bobby met them at the door with a worried expression on his face. The older man waited until the groceries were unloaded, lifting his eyebrows at the amount of pie Dean had come back with, and Alec had wandered upstairs to put his new clothes away.

"What's up?" Dean finally asked, grabbing two beers and dropping into one of the kitchen chairs.

"I sent that picture I took to a guy I know," Bobby explained.

"What did he find?" Sam asked.

"Nothing, but less than thirty seconds after he uploaded it to his search engines and started running whatever it is he does, all his alarms went off and he had to block several attempts to trace him."

Dean's bottle hit the table with a loud thud. "Did they find him?"

"No, Frank's good, great even. He's also a paranoid son of a bitch, but in this case I think he's got reason to be." Bobby sighed, pushing his hat back and scratching his head. "He works out of an RV, doesn't stay in one place very long, so he's already hit the road."

"So now what?" Sam leaned forward, trying to loosen some of the tension in his shoulders.

"Frank knows someone, says they're better than he is, which has to be an understatement for him to even admit something like that," Bobby admitted.

"Can they be trusted?" Dean asked, his voice gruff, his demeanor deadly serious.

"If Frank suggested them, they've got to have some kind of resume. Like I said, the man is paranoid as hell. He doesn't know them by anything but their code name."

"Code name?" Dean questioned.

"Whoever it is, they're a hacker," Sam answered for Bobby.

"Awesome!" Dean groaned.

"I think it's time we have a more serious conversation with the boy," Bobby suggested.

"Yeah, I'll go get him." Dean reluctantly climbed to his feet and headed for the stairs.

Dean knocked on Alec's door and waited until the boy to answer before sticking his head in. It wasn't something he'd do with Sam, but they'd lived in each other's space for so long it never occurred to them to observe the niceties.

Alec was just closing the dresser drawer when Dean pushed the door open.

"Something has come up. We've got to talk," Dean answered Alec's confused look before he could ask any questions.

"Sure," Alec agreed, as he shoved his hands in his pockets. He brushed passed Dean and headed down the stairs.

Dean sighed, following behind the kid. He wished they could put this off a little longer, there was no way the kid trusted them enough to tell them shit. They'd be lucky if he gave them anything at all.

Alec followed Dean down the stairs and into the living room. He dropped into the closest chair, watching as Dean sat down on the couch next to Sam.

Bobby waited until everyone was settled before he turned the computer around to face Alec. "Do you know who this is?" He asked as he gestured to the enlarged picture on the screen.

Alec studied it for a few seconds. "No. Who is he?"

Bobby sighed, "We were hoping you knew. He was at a roadblock the locals had set up inspecting the vehicles that were passing through. I was headed home with you, but luckily I stashed you in the trunk instead of the backseat. I'm pretty sure you were the one he was looking for, and he was more than a little suspicious that I had you because I found a tracker on my rear end a few miles down the road. "

Dean wasn't really surprised when the kid didn't question being put into the trunk versus the backseat. If there was military training in his background, he knew one of the main rules was never to put a potential threat within striking distance, especially when you're in a vulnerable position. He also didn't miss the flash of fear in Alec's eyes before the kid was a blank slate again, neither did Sam if the elbow digging into his ribs was any indication.

"Look Alec, I know you don't trust us, and if I was in your shoes I wouldn't be trusting us either. I also know it's a pretty safe bet we're all you got, cause you haven't tried to contact anyone, and you've had more than enough opportunities. Now we're willing to help you, but unless we know what's going on, we can't do squat."

Dean watched as Alec sized up the situation, glancing at each one of them and back at the picture on the screen, finally slumping down in the chair. He felt like he was watching himself in the mirror when Alec started chewing on his thumb.

Sam groaned beside him, and grumbled, "Great, another nail biter."

"Shut up," Dean mumbled, elbowing him in the side at the same time Alec dropped his hand and scowled over at them.

"I really don't know who he is. If I had to guess I'd say he was government, not the ones you know either, but the super-secret handshake kind," Alec finally answered.

Bobby blanched a little, and swung the computer around to look at it again. "Yeah, that's what I was afraid you were going to say."

"Why? What happened?" Alec asked, sitting up straight in his seat again, looking from one man to the next.

"I had someone looking into it. Unfortunately, it set off a bunch of alarms," Bobby explained.

Dean hadn't seen anyone lose all color as quickly as Alec's face drained. He shifted to the edge of his seat, in case he had to catch the kid before he passed out.

Alec swung his head around, sighting all the exits, and Dean knew he was going to either bolt or hyperventilate. He made it to the kid's chair before he could accomplish either and put a hand on Alec's shoulder, squeezing gently.

"Nobody's coming for you Alec. They don't know where you are, and we're going to keep it that way. It'd be a hell of a lot easier if you'd just tell us what's going on. I mean are you AWOL or something?" Dean asked.

"Or something," Alec mumbled, heaving a huge sigh. He realized he had very few options, just maybe something would work in his favor for once.

"Look, all I ask is you give me a head start before you try to kill me okay," Alec requested, looking grim.

Dean pulled up the chair beside the kid and sat down, glancing over at his brother to see equal parts surprise and worry in Sam's furrowed brow.

"I thought you said you tested him," Sam growled.

"I did, the boy. I've been at this a hell of a lot longer than you. He didn't react to anything, not silver, holy water or anything else I could think of. Hell, his blood runs red, and I even did a couple of exorcisms just to make sure," Bobby growled back.

"How bout we hear him out before you get your panties in a twist," Dean suggested.

Thankfully, the arguing in the room shut up pretty quickly, and all the attention was focused back on Alec.

"I'm not exactly sure where to start, and I really don't have all that much information either," Alec started. He knew he was stalling, but he was also being honest.

"Just tell us what you do know, and we'll see if it gives us somewhere to start from," Sam responded.

"I grew up in a military instillation. We were raised there. "

"We?" Dean questioned.

"Yeah, I wasn't the only one. We were raised in units, there were six to eight in each unit. We slept in the same room, took our meals at the same time, did PT, and trained together. When we got older, they'd send us for individual training, we each had a specialization."

"What was yours?" Sam asked, leaning forward.

"Hand to hand combat, but they also had me at the shooting range. I hadn't finished all the modules yet, so I don't know what kind of missions they were going to send me on."

"Missions?" Bobby echoed.

"Yeah, we were constantly told the training we were doing was for missions. There were invariably whispers about what some of the units had done, but they never let us interact with units that were ahead of us. I mean they rarely let us interact with anyone outside our own unit, only if unless they thought it would help us attain some higher efficiency," Alec explained.

"So why would this make us hunt you?" Dean asked, still stuck on why the kid would think they would kill him.

Alec glanced around at all the exits again, and Dean could see the muscles under the kid's skin bunch in preparation for a fight.

"Because I'm not entirely human," Alec stated softly, waiting for the shock wave of his latest bombshell to hit.