Disclaimer: Sadly no money is being made from the writing of this story. Actually it's being spent on electricity and copious cups of tea. I don't own Dark Angel or any of the characters, recognisable places or scenarios. I wish I owned Alec though. He's delicious.
A/N: Thank you to everyone who's been reading, alerting, favourite-ing (if that's a word!) and reviewing this story. I'm really enjoying writing it, but it's especially nice to know that there are people out there actually waiting to read what happens next!
This has turned into a difficult chapter to write. It actually contains the central idea that got me started writing this story, but it needed working backwards and forwards into a larger tale and then it needed a lot more detail included as a result. I'm still not sure it's right, but I've fiddled about with it for long enough.
Things get pretty angsty from here on out. There is some violence, though I'm trying not to be too graphic.
To recap: Max, Alec and Logan went to meet a contact of Logan's who apparently had some info about transgenics taken captive. It turned out to be a trap and now our intrepid heroes are surrounded...
Chapter Four
"Looks like a standoff." Alec observed.
The man in the suit snorted, "Really? Because it looks to me as though we have all the weapons."
"All but one," Alec waved his handgun ostentatiously as though to remind him, "And I'm pretty fast. I could take you and maybe a couple of your evil henchmen before you could take all three of us. You didn't come in shooting, so I'm pretty sure you were looking to take us alive. So... I've got a compromise for you."
"A compromise? You don't know what I want."
Alec snorted, "You guys always want the same thing. Manticore might be gone now, but you people are all still out there, making your nasty little plans, wanting to experiment on us, or get us to work for you, or just kill us. Look, you can try and take all three of us, but I think you know it won't work. We'll kill you, and your minions there have no use for us without you. Or you'll have to kill all of us, and your uber-villain plan's up in smoke. So, here's the deal. You let them go. I'll go with you. I won't struggle."
"Alec, no!" Max couldn't believe what she was hearing. If this was a sneaky gambit to get them all out of there she was drawing a blank as to what the plan was. But Alec couldn't really be planning to give himself up. It was completely out of character.
"You expect me to believe that, 494?"
"Not really, but it's true. Let them go, stop calling me 494 and...I'm not saying I'll go along with your nefarious plans without a fight, but I'll go with you right now. Come on...I remember how much fun you had when they let you loose on me last time."
"Ok, Alec," The man smirked as he emphasised the pronunciation of the name, "I think we have a deal." He nodded to the men surrounding them and Max and Logan were herded away from Alec.
Max tried to catch his eye, and when he finally looked at her, Alec just smiled. No signal, no wink, no silent communication of what he was hoping she'd do once they were separated and Alec taken away.
The man in the suit signalled to one of the men still holding guns on Alec, who set down his rifle, drew another weapon and fired in one smooth motion. A tranquiliser dart buried itself in Alec's neck and he looked up at the leader in anger. The man shrugged and smiled and it was anything but warm, "I'm not going back on our deal. Just making sure you don't."
The man with the tranquiliser gun fired twice more and Max and Logan both felt darts hit them too. Alec turned again towards Max, "See ya, Maxie." The tension left his muscles and he dropped to the ground and lay still. A second later she saw Logan go down and then she was falling too.
###
Max woke to darkness and quiet. She jumped to her feet, totally unsettled by the idea of having lain there vulnerable and unprotected for who knew how long. She looked around and there was no sign of the men who'd ambushed them. No sign that Alec had been there either. They could be anywhere. Alec had known the suit guy, but there'd been no hint as to who he was, other than ex-Manticore, ex-Psy-ops. Alec hadn't used the man's name, and she knew that was deliberate – if he had the man wouldn't have let them go.
Logan was still sleeping and she knelt by him, shaking his arm through his jacket. He didn't respond, his purely human DNA much slower to metabolise the sedative.
She couldn't believe that Alec had bargained his freedom for her and Logan. This was the guy who was willing to do anything to keep his freedom. She remembered the lengths he'd gone to in the past. He was on the side of the angels now, but he could still be pretty slippery and sometimes his flippant attitude to the difficulties transgenics faced every day drove her nuts. Why would he do this? He must have known they wouldn't just let Max follow them, that it wouldn't be a straight forward rescue.
He'd been so adamant about her not going on those supply heists. He'd said TC needed its leader. They'd argued about that. She figured that must be it. He had done it for all of them, not just for her. She had to admit that the flippancy had been far less evident lately, well, really since the siege started. And when had he last been slippery with her? She'd barely been annoyed with him for weeks now. In fact he'd been nothing but supportive and thoughtful and Oh god, it was her fault he was even in this mess. He'd come to back her up. He hadn't liked the plan and he'd only come because he wanted to keep her safe.
Well what a dope! He was an idiot for following her. He was an idiot for not arguing harder against coming to this place, following this cockamamie plan. He was an idiot for caring about her... He cared about her. Her mouth dropped open. That guy was Psy-ops. Alec had given himself up to Psy-ops for her.
Impatient to get working on finding Alec and getting his sorry ass out of this mess, she shook Logan again, calling his name. Finally he started to move and she drew back so that he wouldn't touch her bare skin while disorientated.
"What the hell?" His speech was slurred and his movements were still sluggish, and Max fought with irritation at his inability to shake it off. "Come on Logan, we need to get out of here. We've gotta find Alec. Come on!" Logan blinked deliberately and pulled himself up into a sitting position.
###
They went over the building with a fine tooth comb, but it was totally clean. There was no clue as to where they'd take Alec, even which direction they'd taken. The bad guys had even hosed the floor of blood before leaving.
"Max, we should go. There's nothing to find here."
Logan was right. They had nothing. Nothing but the picture in her head of the man in the suit.
Alec was gone.
There was nothing for it: she was going to have to return to TC without Alec. She was going to have to tell them all that he was in enemy hands. That until they could get him out he was going to be the prisoner of a man who had already tortured him back in Manticore. Who was going to torture him again.
###
By the time they reached TC she was frantic. She had no clues, and no idea where to start. Right about now she could really have used Alec to bounce some ideas around with. Logan had got them into this with his bad intel and right now, she couldn't look at him, hadn't spoken to him since they'd left the warehouse.
She knew it was a terrible thing to think but for one shameful moment she had actually wished Logan had been the one taken. She knew it hadn't been Logan's fault, not really, but in that split second, she felt a truth she hadn't fully acknowledged before. She wasn't sure when it had happened, but she knew that in a crisis Alec was now the first person she wanted to turn to.
The idea of telling the others filled her with dread. She knew they would be devastated and would look to her to fix this, to lead the charge to find Alec and bring him home safe.
She'd have to tell them who had taken Alec and she knew the thought of one of their own back in the hands of Psy-ops would be crushing. Hell, it was crushing her. She knew firsthand what they could do and she couldn't bear to think of Alec going through that again.
Especially when it was her fault, the thought crept in. She couldn't prevent the self-recrimination. She had known the danger of the intel being bait to a trap, but she'd taken the decision to risk it against her own and Alec's concerns. Mole too had been against her going, again the idea had been voiced that the leader shouldn't be risked, but she'd insisted because Logan's contact had insisted on seeing the big cheese. And look what happened.
She was responsible. She should never have let Alec give himself up. She should be the one taken captive. Alec should be out here planning her rescue. He'd done it because he thought he was more expendable, but that wasn't true. Her eyes filled with tears. She didn't want to lead without her trusty sidekick, her friend.
Whatever reservations she'd held about his commitment to TC and to her, they were gone now. Old Alec would never have gone willingly. This new Alec? The sacrifice he'd made was almost beyond comprehension. It wasn't just that he'd risked his life for her. It wasn't even that he'd sacrificed his freedom. It was that he'd known without doubt that he was giving himself up to suffer the most brutal, cruel and merciless torture imaginable. They were going to take him apart, physically, mentally and emotionally. They wouldn't stop until he was utterly broken.
An uncontrollable wave of misery and hopelessness broke over her, almost dropping her to her knees. Only the knowledge that every second counted kept her moving through the sewer, but she couldn't prevent the sob from escaping.
"Max, are you hurt?" she couldn't trust her voice to answer. Logan carefully placed a hand on the sleeve of her jacket.
"Max, are you OK?" She forced herself to look at him.
"Oh God! What have I done?"
"This wasn't your fault." He couldn't quite bring himself to take the blame on himself. He'd been acting on good faith after all. He was shocked by the depth of her anguish, for Alec? He felt a stab of jealousy and pushed it down immediately. That was unworthy and it wasn't the time.
"Logan, I let them take him. And now... I have to get him out of there. I've got to find him, now."
"We'll get him out. Don't worry, Alec'll be fine."
"Don't worry? That guy was Psy-ops, Logan!"
"Alec didn't seem all that worried."
"Are you kidding me? Do you have any idea what they'll do to him?"
"He's tough. He wouldn't have gone with them if-"
"No Logan. He went with them so they'd let us go. So we wouldn't all have to go through it. He did that for me. They're going to torture him."
Logan didn't want to contradict her and start an argument. Max was understandably upset, but there was just no way that Alec, of all people, would sign up for anything that bad. He'd obviously just thought that a couple of them left behind to mount a rescue maximised the chances of survival over all three of them having to escape.
###
Logan began to revise his opinion when they got back to TC and Max announced to the transgenics what had happened.
There was a collective gasp. He looked around at wide eyes, open mouths and white faces. Joshua covered his mouth, fighting back tears.
"We're getting him back." Max asserted. No room for argument. No room for failure. They would not leave Alec behind with those animals.
"He could be anywhere, Max." Mole's tone was typically brusque, but his follow up question, "Where do we start?" spoke volumes.
"It's not much to go on, but I saw the guy. Maybe some of you know him from before. If we can start narrowing down identity, we can figure out what he's into now and where he might be holing up. I need hacks into the hover drones, the street cams and all the chatter: sector cops, military, anything we can track. We need to be putting out discreet feelers. Any contacts. Any contacts of contacts. Anyone who might know anything about anything. Any other suggestions, I'm all ears. We'll pay bribes, do favours, kick down doors, hand out smack-downs. I don't care what it takes. We're getting him back."
Max wasn't kidding. She set them to work; anyone not doing something vital was reassigned. Getting Alec back was mission priority one.
Max didn't say anything about blame to Logan, but it was clear she expected him to apply the same focus. Eyes Only, any other projects were now on the backburner. He wasn't going to baulk. Even if Max didn't blame him, everyone knew where the intel had come from and it would be very difficult for him to spend time in TC, to be near Max unless he made amends.
###
Alec woke suddenly to pain and blinding light. He tried to look away, to see behind the light but the beam was too wide. He closed his eyes. His wrists and ankles were restrained and he couldn't lift or even turn his head. He was lying on something hard.
The pain that had woken him was repeated, a brutal blow across his ribs with something that felt like a bat. It forced the air out of his lungs and he coughed, gasping for breath. The next blow was across his abdomen. He was so tightly restrained he couldn't recoil.
He tried to concentrate on his surroundings, pick up some clues as to what he was up against. He could see the brightness of the light through his eyelids. He could hear someone moving but there were definitely at least two people nearby; he could hear their breathing and could smell two different deodorant scents.
The only warning he had of the next blow was the movement of the bat through the air. He tried to prepare for it, to brace himself, but it hit his abdomen in the same place as the last and could only be described as agonising. He bit back a cry, damned if he'd give them a reaction.
It took a moment to remember what the hell was going on, but when he did, it focused his mind instantly on the only question that mattered: Had Max got away safe?
They beat him until his whole body felt broken and he was barely clinging to consciousness.
Then it started to get really bad.
###
Of course the first lead they followed up, Logan's informant, was in the wind. Logan was getting nowhere with his contacts. Max's people were looking into who might have the resources to have amassed the unit they'd faced, and how they had moved to and from the warehouse.
There had to be a trail.
They looked everywhere. They looked at days' worth of surveillance videos but serious wheels must have been greased, because there was no coverage of the roads for more than a square kilometre around the warehouse and long gaps in the recordings in various areas of the city to cover the trail and to prevent them from knowing which missing recording was significant.
They pored over the transcripts of chatter picked up from hacked frequencies, but nobody was talking about Alec. Bribes came to nothing; nobody begrudged the money but it was worrying because their funds were far from unlimited.
Every transgenic in TC was questioned in precise detail about who they'd had contact with in Psy-ops, and who they'd had contact with since Manticore had fallen. A very high proportion of her people had come to know the man in the suit under circumstances that had them subdued, unable to maintain eye contact, twitchy, and occasionally tearful as they recounted them.
Max was building a picture of the man; little by little more detail was added to that brief sketch in the warehouse. It wasn't a picture she liked. The stories she'd heard showed that he was particularly feared, particularly brutal. He enjoyed his work. Hadn't Alec said as much to him? He remembered how much fun the man had when he'd been let loose on him the last time.
They had identified seven aliases for the man, so far.
He was known variously as Doctor Carlton, Doctor Dobson, Commander Ventress, Mr Davidson, Mr Johnson, Redman, and McCoughlan.
It seemed Manticore had used fake names for their operatives to keep them secure. She realised the names of their captors were no more meaningful than the numbers she and her transgenic family had been assigned. What was a name really? Was it any different from a number in the end? Was it just a code to identify an object?
She'd come to see the man in the suit like some kind of ghost or demon from the movies. If you could learn his real name, maybe then you had power over him.
What she couldn't get her head around was the fact that he had transgenics working for him. Did he have something over them or did they actually want to be there? She kept thinking back to the fight in the warehouse, and the transgenics who'd helped the ordinaries to subdue them. The more she thought about it, the angrier she became. How could they turn on their own? How could they be part of a mission to capture one of their own?
###
Mid afternoon of the second day Max walked into her office to find Logan asleep on his laptop keyboard. She had to resist the almost overwhelming urge to yell at him for falling asleep on the job. She was still working; why couldn't he? None of the others had taken a break either. They'd kept up the hacks, the analysis, the running down of information.
She'd called Sketchy in the vain hope that he might come across some clue in the course of one of his investigations for the paper. OC knew all sorts of people, so she was on the case too. Even Asha had the S1W on the lookout.
Max was wracking her brain for any other ideas, any clues she might not have noticed as such during the ambush. But she had nothing. When she'd spouted out the plan to the group she hadn't known what she was going to say until she'd opened her mouth, and if she opened it again, she was pretty sure only air would come out.
###
It was late in the evening on the third day when Joshua came to her.
"Little Fella?"
The hesitation in his voice showed he was not coming to her with news. She huffed impatiently. She didn't have time for anything unrelated to the search.
"What is it Joshua?"
"Max needs to rest."
"Josh, I can rest when I get Alec back."
"No. Little Fella too tired to think. Hurt too."
"I'm fine."
"Not fine. Scared. Feeling guilty. Missing Alec. Little Fella, Joshua feels same. But TC tired. Won't stop until leader does. But what if we miss important clue because too tired to see significance? Too desperate to understand clearly?"
Max didn't want to hear the truth in what Joshua was saying. She'd had little patience with Logan's weakness and she had none at all with her own. Standing still though, talking to Joshua, she was suddenly aware of her head swimming with exhaustion and the soreness of the bruises and cuts she'd taken in the fight. She'd been pushing the pain down but she knew she'd broken a rib. She'd set two broken fingers back into position almost without thinking while she and Logan had scoured the warehouse and they were still pretty sore and swollen too.
She hated the thought of stopping, even for a moment. Knew what could be happening to Alec as she allowed seconds to tick by without making progress or taking action.
Joshua was right though. She was running on fumes and so were the others.
If they hadn't found Alec by now, they had to look at this differently, dig in for a longer campaign. She bit back the tears threatening to escape and led Joshua out into the command centre.
"Guys! Lights out in ten. Be back in six hours. Bring your A game."
Everyone paused for a moment, considering. Max looked terrible, not even because of the black eye and split lip that weren't quite healed after three days. She was obviously exhausted and strung out with worry. They all were. She wasn't giving up though; her posture, her expression and tone all demonstrated determination, even defiance. This was not defeat. There were nods of reluctant agreement and then movement towards the door and a few moments later command was deserted and silent.
Max and Joshua walked slowly back towards their apartments, separating without a word at Joshua's door.
###
Max stood in her bedroom, still resisting the idea of rest, trying to fight the heaviness of her limbs, the burning of her eyes. Try as she might to see sense, in her heart she could see this as nothing less than failing Alec.
She sighed and lay down on the bed. If she was going to force this break, she'd better at least use it sensibly.
In spite of her exhaustion sleep wouldn't come. She lay, unable to relax, trying not to let her imagination wander towards what Alec might be going through at that moment. Trying not to feel how TC seemed to grow to enormous proportions at the thought of leading her chaotic transgenic community without Alec's support.
She'd prayed once before, when she'd thought Logan was dying. They'd thought it was the virus. She'd prayed and it had turned out to be chicken pox. In that moment of relief, she hadn't been sure that her prayer hadn't been answered, a miracle transforming her freak virus to something ordinary and treatable.
Since then that inchoate faith had taken some severe hits. If ever there was a time to take that leap of faith it was now. If anyone deserved her prayers it was Alec, who'd offered everything he had to protect her. But she couldn't do it. The losses they'd suffered, their continuing captivity, the very fact that Alec was gone because they'd taken a chance to save others. How could that happen? How could it be allowed to happen?
She couldn't pray. She couldn't find the faith to trust her friend to some higher power who had never lifted a finger to protect them. But she wished with all her heart that Alec would know with certainty that they would come for him, she would come for him, and that it would give him the strength to endure.
She sent her thoughts, her heart to him with all of the energy she could muster. She couldn't have faith in a god, but she realised she had faith in Alec. Faith in his resilience, in his stubbornness and in his pain in the ass smart aleck nature. He would hold on until she found him. She held to that and allowed images that had been crowding the edges of her mind's eye to take hold.
She could see him, that cocky, shit-eating grin when he'd done something outrageous that he knew would annoy her. That smile was infectious. She could never hold onto her annoyance. She saw him carefree and irresponsible, then haunted and grief-stricken and she knew the selfish, amused Alec was a disguise he wore to try to protect himself from emotions that threatened to overwhelm.
The images came thick and fast: Alec scared for his life but unable to deliver the killing blow to her that might save him. Alec in Joshua's basement, playing the piano like a professional concert pianist, in an instant switching to lethal killing machine, a hand around Joshua's throat, caught up in memories of failure and despair for a situation she knew had been beyond his control. Alec with his arm around her, kissing the top of her head in comfort and solidarity as she cried over her brother, his psycho clone who had caused him so much suffering.
The real Alec was the one who had always backed her up without question. The guy sitting slumped in grief, emotion for once exposed and vulnerable to her so she'd understand him and by that, understand all of them, what they'd been when they were soldiers, reminding her that the dead had been heroes, worthy of respect; that they all were. The guy standing in front of her dirty but triumphant, reminding her of who they were and how strong they were, how determined.
Then the images changed. She saw him lying in a bare concrete cell, bruised and bleeding. Saw him strapped down, laser burning into his eye. Saw his body convulsing, back arched from taser shocks. Saw him surrounded by shadowy figures, defiant under cruel blows from fists and boots and sharp, ugly weapons. She heard him scream and she shot bolt upright, heart pounding, drenched in sweat and realised that she was screaming too.
###
They hadn't even questioned him yet. He figured they wanted to break him down first, knew he wouldn't just give up information because they asked for it. He was in pretty bad shape already, he had to admit. That first beating had broken a couple of ribs and really screwed up his right knee. That was going to make escaping pretty difficult.
Then they'd thrown him in a big, cold, metal-walled cell and left him for who knew how long. Had to have been just below freezing in there, just like the endurance training he'd hated so much as a kid.
And no windows, no light, no sound.
Time deprivation was one of the most effective weapons in the torturer's arsenal. People always got freaked out, thinking it was forever when in reality it had only been five minutes. He'd been counting but that could never be really accurate. He'd counted twenty seven hours, but it could have been a few hours either way.
Then they'd dragged him out of the cell and strapped him back down and he'd spent some quality time with his eyes taped open under the laser. He'd tried to count that too, but he'd been so overwhelmed that he'd lost count after four hours and five minutes, and it had gone on for a good long while after that. In fact he wasn't sure he remembered it stopping, just knew he'd come back to awareness and the laser was gone and he was back in the cold, dark room, this time hanging by his wrists from the ceiling. His toes just touched the ground, but he couldn't get enough purchase to take the strain off his arms. From the numbness in his hands and the pain in his wrist, elbow and shoulder joints, he'd been there for a while.
If he'd been asked to describe what that laser felt like, he'd have said it was impossible. The swirl of images and the excruciating pain left a person confused, disorientated, and desperate, but too exhausted and weak to move. But none of those words really got to the reality of it.
He knew the images they beamed straight into his mind and that moved so fast that he couldn't attend to them properly would be working away inside his head, repeating with the subliminal words, trying to make him believe what they wanted him to believe, breaking down what he cared about, turning him against everyone he'd chosen to love. He used the dark to concentrate on those images, playing them back slowly, deconstructing the message so he could fight it.
On the upside, using the laser before they questioned him, they'd given him an idea of what it was they wanted from him. Obviously they wanted information on TC, but it was more than that; some of the images they were showing him were targets, others were desirables. It looked like they wanted to break TC's leadership and they believed if they did so, the others would just look for another leader. They believed that the majority of its citizens would happily return to the Manticore fold. They were trying to rebuild Manticore and they clearly believed that they would be able to make Alec help them with that.
On the downside, he needed to be realistic; it was possible that once they actually started questioning him, his brain would be so fried he wouldn't know what the hell he was saying.
He counted fourteen hours before they took him back to the laser and another four and a half hours before he lost track again.
###
Every time a new transgenic had arrived they'd got the grilling. Did they know the man in the suit? Had they ever been approached by someone looking to restart Manticore? Did they know any transgenics who had been approached by such a person? Had they heard anything about anything that could vaguely be considered somewhat related to Alec's disappearance?
Lots of them said yes to the first question, and boy was that not reassuring, but it was a big soul-sucking black hole of a zero to all the other questions.
###
Man he was thirsty, and hungry.
Some time around the fourth day, he'd got so dehydrated they'd strapped him to that torture chair with an IV in his arm. He felt marginally less crappy for the fluids, but was pretty miserable to find that was how they were going to play it because the dryness in his mouth was almost as insistent a form of discomfort as the strained joints in his arms, though not quite as bad as the laser eye-burn and headache. And the bruises and broken bones. They weren't exactly a dance party.
###
Day six had Max tearing her hair out, almost literally. The leads weren't leading anywhere. They were almost at the dead end of all of them and everyone was looking to her for some sort of guidance, some next steps, some fresh new seam of hope that they'd get Alec back home.
Then Logan showed up. He didn't have any news. He didn't have any new leads. He didn't have any ideas for where to look for new leads. He just wanted to see her and it took all her strength not to bash him over the head with her useless computer that wasn't helping her find Alec either.
"Max, can't you take a break? We could go back to your place and talk. I can cook something for you. It'll do you good. Get your mind off things." He wasn't getting the level of her frustration; that was clear from the frankly moronic suggestion. She tried to retain some composure in her response.
"I can't Logan. I can't think about anything else until he's back here, safe." She was sure that the look he quickly tamped down was petulance and she worked on not killing him with the computer.
"I get that you're worried, but you're going to get sick if you don't take care of yourself. And I miss you. I just want to catch up. An hour won't make any difference."
Her frustration amped to a level she wouldn't have imagined possible a week ago. She took a deep breath. "This is about you, not me. You're feeling lonely, left out? You want my attention on you rather than Alec, who is probably at this exact moment screaming in pain.
"You think an hour won't make a difference to him? You wanna catch up?
"That's what's in my head right now. The sound of Alec screaming for my help.
"So, now we're caught up. And unless you've got some brainwave on how to find him, do not suggest I should get my mind off things by letting you cook for me. Do not even talk to me about anything that doesn't relate to finding my best friend who is being tortured because he made it so you and I aren't being tortured."
Logan finally got the message, he wasn't going to win today but he felt Max was being a little unfair. It wasn't like he didn't understand that Alec could be in a bad place right now. He knew he and Max had been lucky to get away. He thought maybe she was being a little melodramatic. In fact, he was secretly wondering if Alec hadn't spilled everything the second he'd been asked and was now sipping mojitos in Buenos Aires while everyone in TC ran around after him like he was some big damn hero, not considering for a second that they should be preparing for the fall out of whatever intel Alec had betrayed to buy his freedom.
Still, that probably wasn't what Max wanted to hear right now, and he knew how to be diplomatic.
"I can see this was a bad idea. I didn't mean to upset you. I'll get out of your hair now. Call me if you need me."
Max nodded tightly, watching as he left the room and closed the door quietly as though not to provoke her. She listened until she could no longer hear the whirring of the exoskeleton and then indulged a brief, but loud growl of frustration.
It was significant, she felt, that Logan hadn't actually apologised. She suspected that he really wasn't taking Alec's situation seriously anymore. She'd begun to suspect that he was telling himself Alec had betrayed them, but was too polite to say anything. If she found out he wasn't chasing leads because of it, she'd... she wasn't sure what she'd do, but she knew for damn certain Logan would not enjoy it.
As Logan crossed the open ground on his way to the gate it hit him, exactly what she'd said. Her best friend. She'd said Alec was her best friend. When the hell had that happened? Jealousy twisted in his gut. He'd thought he was her best friend. Maybe he'd have accepted her saying Cindy was. At a stretch even Joshua, these days.
After everything he'd done, Alec of all people was not worthy of that honour. And Max was pissed with him. Did she care more about Alec than she did about him? Did she love Alec? Had she stopped loving him?
This visit had backfired worse than he could have imagined. He knew things were rocky between them. It had been so difficult to maintain any regular contact since this whole siege had started, but to be usurped by an amoral shark like Alec?
Clinging to the shreds of his dignity, he stalked out of the compound and headed for home where he could lick his wounds, think about things and plan how to get back into Max's good books.
As Max turned back to sit down at her computer she realised what she'd just said to Logan. She'd called Alec her best friend. She'd never used that phrase to describe Alec before, but it had just come out and now she was wondering if that was true. Had he taken that central a role in her life? Was she closer now to him than to all of her other friends? Logan, Cindy, Joshua? Yes, she probably was.
She wasn't just worried about Alec, she missed him desperately. There were so many things she wanted to talk to him about, not just as her Deputy but as a friend who would empathise, take her side and laugh or commiserate with her. Without him here, she couldn't see the humour or the hope in anything. Everything seemed dark around her, grey and overwhelming. She wanted his snarky comments, his irreverent take on things. She wanted his hand casually touching her arm, her back. She wanted so desperately to see him smile.
Was that a best friend? If she really thought about it, really examined it honestly, she thought no, that wasn't a best friend. He was more than that. A partner, a confidant. He was everything Logan used to be to her, and actually a lot more. She didn't just want his hand casually touching her arm, she wanted his arms around her like that day when she'd cried in his arms, and fallen asleep in his lap. She didn't just want to see him smile. She wanted to see him smile for her. She didn't just want his kiss on the top of her head, she wanted his kiss...
He was her best friend, yes, but she wanted more than that from him. Having him taken away from her forced her to face the truth. She loved him.
###
This time, Alec could feel the presence of someone in the freezing cell with him, but there was no light, not even a sliver under the door that would have allowed his enhanced transgenic vision to get an idea of who was there.
It really couldn't be good that they hadn't questioned him yet. They really weren't worried at all that he'd escape first or be rescued.
He trained his hearing on the other person's breathing and monitored the scent, getting a bead on location. At the moment they were staying still and had to be about 6 feet away from him. Too far for him to kick out at them.
It was hard to think about anything other than the pain and the thirst and the hunger and the cold and the other person and what might happen next. And waiting for something to happen, that was the worst.
He knew that he had to get his mind off all that, off the here and now, otherwise he'd go nuts. He might break before Max got him out of there. He had to believe that Max was free, and he had to believe that she'd find him. He had to hold to hope, it was the only way to stay strong.
He forced his mind away from the room, back to TC. He pictured all of them working away in command, their own little corner of the world, their ramshackle, run down, toxic home. His comrades, working to build a community, a family.
He pictured Max. This was all for her.
He'd known right from the start that he should have run as far and as fast as he could from her, but something had kept him close by and it had taken him a good long while before he'd understood what that was.
He remembered saying to Logan once that the reason guys did stuff for Max was because she was hot. Well, that was true to a certain extent, but there were lots of hot women out there and he was pretty sure he wouldn't have turned himself over to that animal Dobson and his Manticore buddies for any of them.
The pain in his arms and the thirst were pulling hard on his attention, and he needed something more than Max's hotness to keep his mind off all that.
In the past he'd just told Psy-ops what they wanted to hear. He'd had nothing to lose, even after Rachel. She was gone, and there was nothing he could do about it; he'd had nothing to protect except himself, his sense of self. So he'd shut off his emotions and just did what he had to in order to survive.
He couldn't do that this time. The torture was only going to get worse and at some point the interrogation would start and this time he had everything to lose, everything he'd worked to build, everything and everyone he'd come to care about.
More importantly, they had everything to lose. Max had everything to lose. He needed a strategy. He had to be ready.
He needed something to hold onto, and it had to come from his best self, the part of him that kept going back to Max, the part that wanted her to be proud of him.
Most of his physical contact with Max in the early days had been her kicking him across rooms, smacking him in the head, punching him in the arm.
Those were fun memories, but they weren't going to cut it.
If he was going to make it through this without destroying everything he believed in and betraying everyone he cared for he needed to pull out the big guns.
He needed to open himself up to those half acknowledged thoughts and feelings he'd been having when Max had looked at him with something other than anger or disappointment.
When she'd looked at him with surprise or gratitude or humour, and once in a while, with affection. When she'd smiled at him.
When she'd put her arms around him and kissed him on the cheek, and then smoothed his blanket and tucked him in because he'd brought her slippers back to TC. When she'd let herself cry, and then fall asleep in his arms. That one had been featuring pretty heavily in the fantasies he'd been trying to suppress lately. He let it hit him full force, how he'd felt, how protective of her, how grateful she saw something in him that she could trust enough to show her vulnerability, how he'd wanted to never let her go.
Even the morning of the ambush, sitting in their office, just hanging out and throwing peanuts. That had to have been the happiest he'd ever been. He had been sure of his place, sure of her acceptance of him. They'd been comfortable together, everyone was well and happy and she was relaxed and having fun with him.
His heart swelled at that memory.
She wasn't just some hot woman who always got her own way. Max was awesome. She was his leader, his best friend, his family, the best person he knew. He loved her.
He could do this. He could take the pain. There was almost nothing he wouldn't do to get a drink. That was the key word though, almost. Max was the almost. He could hold out, as long as it took. He wasn't going to betray Max for anything. He'd die first.
Then the other person in the room moved and the beating started. By the time it was done he was surprised not to be dead.
###
Eight days after Alec had been taken Mole entered her office with practically a whole unit guarding a young woman. They were grim faced and held tasers and guns as though itching to drop her.
"Mole?"
"Psy-ops. Telecoercive. Says she wants in." Mole's voice dripped scepticism and tension.
The young woman looked as though she was about to speak, but Mole silenced her with a primed taser jammed under her chin. The telecoercive kept her gaze lowered, knowing that any eye contact would be viewed as an act of aggression, an attempt to use her power.
"What's your name?" Max asked, not friendliness, but wariness in her tone.
"Psy-734."
"Not your designation. What's your name?"
The woman paused, "I've been going by Callie."
"That's what you chose?"
"I uh, I guess."
Max couldn't help herself; telecoercive or not, everyone deserved a real identity, "'Cause you can take any name you want."
"Callie's fine. I'm Callie."
"You're a telecoercive?"
"Yes, Ma'am."
"It's Max."
"Yes, Max."
"But you want to come here?"
"Yes."
"You might have noticed a certain amount of hostility to telecoercives here. Maybe it's even directed at you personally, I don't know your history. Not to mention Terminal City is not exactly prime real estate. You of all people could live wherever you want. Why would you want to be here?"
"I watch the news. I've seen what's going on in the world. I'm transgenic. I want to be part of the fight. I want us all to be free. I think I can be useful."
"You think we want to manipulate our way to acceptance?"
"No. That's not real acceptance. I haven't used that except in self-defence since you busted us all out of Manticore. I don't want to help like that. I want to really help. I'm a paramedic now. I'm training to be a trauma doctor."
"You expect us to believe that?" Mole voiced the question on everyone's mind.
"Not really. I know you have no reason to trust me. I know that back in Manticore they made me and the others like me into your enemies. But it doesn't have to be like that anymore. I followed orders and I know that doesn't sound like nearly enough of an excuse, but I lived with the same threat you all did. If I wasn't following orders I wasn't necessary. If I wasn't necessary I was dead. That's over now and I just want a chance to prove myself."
Max was just as sceptical as Mole, but she was seeing some possibilities. She'd meant what she'd said about the mind-control. It would only be counter-productive if they used it against ordinaries. If Callie was telling the truth though, she could be really useful.
Max lived under constant fear of the army losing patience and launching an attack. Or the sector cops. And White. She still second-guessed her decision to stop Joshua from killing him that day at Jam Pony. He was still out there somewhere. And in spite of the regularly replenished supplies of condoms, there were a number of women in the compound starting to "glow" and look a little plumper around the middle.
Under the circumstances they really couldn't have enough trained medics.
And then there was the knowledge she could have. Callie was Psy-ops. Maybe she knew the man in the suit. Maybe she could be the lead they'd been searching for. Of course she could be playing them. She could have her own agenda, her own priorities. She could have power over them and they wouldn't even know it. Max had been burned before and she hated the idea of making the wrong decision again.
She'd run it by Alec, he had a good feel for peoples' intentions. For a second the thought stood firm and then she remembered and the fresh realisation that he was gone almost brought her to her knees.
###
Max debriefed Callie minutely for two hours. She still wasn't sure about her, but the new arrival appeared to be totally candid. She didn't sugar coat her history and she provided detailed intel about Psy-ops procedures that Max both hoped would be helpful and wished she didn't know.
More importantly they now had a real name: Robert Corrigan.
Manticore had been sure of Callie's loyalty. Only her previous exemplary conduct had saved her from a memory wipe or worse when she had once been privy to a case file where someone had been sloppy; a few things that would usually have been blacked out had remained legible and she had seen the real names of two of the Psy-ops Commanders, one of whom was the man in the suit. She recognised him from the sketch Joshua had drawn from Max's verbal description and the aliases. It was definitely the same guy.
If this lead panned out, Max would be eternally grateful to Callie and the fact that she had a new avenue of investigation was reason enough to give Callie the benefit of the doubt.
###
"So, 494. You've had a taste of my hospitality. How have you enjoyed it so far?"
Alec was strapped to the chair again. The laser was set up in front of him but the beam wasn't on and his eyes weren't taped open. It was there as a constant reminder of what they could do.
He was about to react to the use of his Manticore designation – that had been part of the deal after all, that he was to be called Alec – when he realised. It was always his mouth that got him into trouble. It was how he'd got his name, Max calling him a smart aleck.
He wasn't going to let Dobson bait him, he wouldn't give glib answers, wouldn't say anything that might let slip something he didn't intend by mistake. His best bet was not to talk at all.
Dobson started easy. How many transgenics were in TC? How many were transhumans, X5s, X6s, X7s, X8s? How were they getting in and out without being caught? What was the exact chain of command?
"You don't feel like playing today? That's OK. We're not playing." Dobson nodded to someone who stepped forward into Alec's peripheral vision. Another face from the past, a face from the last time he'd been strapped down under a laser beam. A telecoercive.
###
He'd never honestly tried to fight telecoercion, not directly anyway. He'd hidden parts of himself away, prevaricated with his responses, told them enough of what they wanted to hear that he'd been able to hold to his core self by never letting them know it was even there to be controlled or broken. Still, this guy, he'd got closest of all of them. Last time he'd met this guy he'd wound up barely able to remember who he was.
This time they knew what they wanted from him, they knew what he would fight. He would have to actually resist a full frontal assault on his mind. He brought his feelings for Max up like a shield in front of him. This was what he was fighting to protect, this was everything he had to lose, but this was also what would save him from the abyss.
Alec braced himself. He wasn't going to talk. He'd promised himself that. He couldn't promise he wouldn't scream.
###
They started afresh, followed every lead again with the real name in the mix. The intel appeared to show that Corrigan had been creating a new Manticore. He had some funding and some tacit support in high places. It was all strictly hush-hush, but it seemed that there was still appetite in Government for the kind of high-end special ops skills that transgenics had provided in the past.
She knew from her experience in that warehouse that he had transgenics in his employ. The question was, were they there by choice or coercion? That would affect how she dealt them when, not if, she had to go through them to get to Alec.
They'd pieced together Corrigan's recent history, and had some idea of his movements from the destruction of Manticore to eight weeks before Alec was taken. Then he dropped off the grid. They hadn't been able to get any lock on his movements or communications for those weeks leading up to the ambush. And there was nothing since either.
###
He guessed maybe they were annoyed not to have made any progress because they'd dragged him back to the cell and he'd taken another beating while hanging from the ceiling. It had messed with his arms badly, repeated blows to his right side increasing the strain until he'd felt his right shoulder pop out of its socket, shortly followed by a similar popping of his elbow as the bat slammed into his left arm.
Beads of cold sweat had popped out on his forehead and upper lip and he'd felt his abdominal muscles spasm as he'd heaved bile and spat.
Next thing he was aware of he was lying on the floor of the cell and his shoulder and elbow had been shoved crudely back into place.
For the first time he wasn't restrained. He tried to stretch cramped muscles but a million points of pain had him curling back into himself.
He did a quick inventory. Arms were good for very little. Grating ribs hurt like a son of a bitch. His knee was still sore from that first beating, he wasn't really healing. His head was all over the place from the sessions with the laser and the onslaught from the telecoercive. He was weak as a kitten from lack of food and water.
He couldn't ever remember feeling worse and he had no idea of the scale of what he was up against. It certainly wasn't an optimal situation for an escape attempt. Still he had to work with what he had, if only for his own morale, to show he still had fight in him. He didn't hold out a lot of hope that he'd make it out of there, but maybe if he was lucky he might be able to get some intel on layout, numbers, weapons. It was worth a try.
###
He could hear footsteps approaching and knew that it was now or never. Trying to stand almost convinced him not to try anything else. His head span and he had to lean heavily against the wall to stay upright. If the room wasn't dark he was pretty sure he'd be seeing black spots. He braced himself as best he could without the ability to take a deep breath and waited for his moment.
The door opened and he launched himself at the man who entered. It wasn't pretty or graceful, or anything like his trainers would have expected, but there was an "oof" of surprise and the man went down under his weight. Alec drew in his strength and, knowing it would hurt like hell, slammed his injured left elbow into the man's windpipe, following up with a jab to the temple which robbed the man of consciousness while sending a shockwave of agony through Alec's right wrist all the way up to his shoulder. Alec bit down on his lip hard, trying not to cry out in pain, to keep from attracting any attention.
He felt around in the dark, hands quickly finding night vision goggles, a pen, a clipboard and a set of keys. He held his optimism in check; it wouldn't do to get ahead of himself. He put on the goggles and took in his surroundings for the first time. The cell he'd been held in was large, and totally bare. The walls and door were steel and there were no windows. The restraints still hung from the ceiling, the sight of them making him even more nauseated. The cell was almost as oppressive to look at as it had been in the total dark. The door led to an ante-room, also without windows and he realised that was how they'd kept the light out, by closing the outer door before opening the inner one. It meant he couldn't see what was waiting for him on the other side.
The man he'd taken down was wearing a shirt and tie under the white coat of a doctor. Alec quickly swapped the man's clothes for his own, ridiculously glad to be out of the soiled clothes he'd been wearing since he'd been taken.
Adrenaline had kicked in, anaesthetising his injuries a little, and he was grateful for the temporary respite. He dragged the unconscious man into the cell and took everything he could find that could conceivably be of use; the man's watch showed him date and time, revealing he wasn't far off in his estimate; he'd been there almost two weeks. There was a syringe lying on the floor where the man had dropped it and he took that too, it would be satisfying to use one of his captors' weapons against them.
He stood at the outer door, listening but couldn't hear anything outside. He tried the keys in the lock and the second turned easily in the well-oiled mechanism. He gathered his strength and slowly pulled the door open.
The corridor outside was brightly lit and he slipped off the goggles, having to take a minute to adjust. His eyes hurt from the laser and his vision remained blurred, but there wasn't time to waste. He slipped out of the ante-room and locked the door behind him.
There was a choice, left or right, and no obvious reason to favour one direction over the other, so he went left, reasoning that he'd be able to support himself with his left hand against the wall, with his right free to defend himself with the syringe held like a knife.
He made his way along the passage, surprised at how breathless he felt just walking. He was exhausted, and even with the adrenaline coursing through him dulling the pain, it was everything he could do to keep going.
There were doors at regular intervals on each side and he held his breath as he passed each, waiting for one to open, for someone to stop him.
Then his heart was in his mouth as two guards rounded the corner ahead and walked towards him. He kept going, trying to straighten, to walk normally and not draw any attention. They were talking and didn't even look at him and he swallowed nervously, working to keep from looking back as they passed him.
He reached the end of the corridor and slowed, trying to see round the corner, to assess the next steps. As he made the turn, his hope dried up. Standing silently ahead of him were two soldiers, a man and a woman. Two of the transgenics from the warehouse.
For a split second he considered giving himself up, but then the unfairness of it all hit him, the frustration and fear and pain of the last week overwhelmed him and he couldn't stop himself; he launched himself at them in a desperate attempt to get some payback. He jabbed the needle into the man's shoulder and depressed the syringe, then slammed the heel of his left palm into the woman's sternum, sending her sprawling to the floor, a split second before the man crumpled to the ground, unconscious from whatever drug had been meant for Alec.
He went to push forward but the woman had gone into a roll and was back on her feet, blurring towards him. She delivered a swift kick to the side of his head and he didn't have the speed or strength to block it. He crashed into the wall, agony exploding from his ribs at the impact and he slid to the ground, dazed.
Even if he'd had the energy to get back to his feet, there was no point. The guards that had passed him were back, in fighting stance before him, tasers in hand and he realised they'd known who he was all along.
The only satisfaction he could take was the unconscious doctor in the cell and the unconscious soldier in the hall, but he had no more idea of what it would take to escape this hell-hole than he had before. He fought tears of defeat and rested his head against the wall, waiting for the inevitable.
He didn't know if he'd blacked out, but he didn't remember closing his eyes. He felt a hand on his face and opened his eyes to see the blurred figure of Dobson. He turned his head away, but the hand followed, almost gentle in its touch.
"I'm impressed, 494. I wouldn't have thought you'd have the strength for something like this after everything. It was futile though, I'm sure you'll agree." He smiled almost kindly and the sight made Alec's skin crawl.
Keeping his eyes on Alec, he addressed himself to his staff. "Bring him." Then he stood and walked away.
The two human guards approached and Alec would have gone quietly if one of them hadn't given in to the temptation to mess with him. The taller of the two, borrowing strength from the presence of the transgenic woman, crouched and slapped him hard across the face, snapping his head to the side. Alec turned back to look at him, to show defiance, and the man spat right in his face.
Alec took a split second to weigh his options and figuring he had nothing to lose, head-butted the guy as hard as he could. However short-lived the satisfaction at the crunching sound of a breaking nose would prove, it was enough to give him the presence of mind and the hope for future opportunities that when he found himself winded and sprawled on the floor, clinging to consciousness, he was able to work a paperclip free from the clipboard he'd taken from the cell and slip it into his mouth just before the transgenic woman forced a knee into his back and secured his hands behind him with a cable tie.
###
Retribution was swift and brutal. He was dragged into a room he hadn't seen before, and secured to a chair bolted to the middle of the floor. Dobson gave him no warning at all before he pulled out a 9mm and fired straight into his thigh.
###
It took more than three weeks to track Logan's informant to a ratty apartment over a pawn shop in Lawrence, Kansas. The smack-down Max administered with a certain degree of grim satisfaction didn't produce anything useful. The snitch had been taken blindfolded to a derelict dry cleaning shop in sector 2, where a man obscured by shadow had promised him cash or a painful death in return for his cooperation or obstruction respectively. Cash on delivery; his reward had been delivered to a dead drop site. He hadn't seen faces, hadn't heard names.
The only helpful thing he could provide was money. Max took the remainder of the fee he'd received for selling them out to add to the Rescue Alec fund.
###
There was before the escape attempt and there was after. Before had been a cakewalk, Alec realised now. Since his break for freedom had been thwarted Dobson hadn't let up. He was strapped down in the chair all the time now, and he didn't know what exactly was in the drugs they were giving him, but sometimes he couldn't move and every nerve ending felt on fire, every touch was agony. Other times he shook so hard he felt his muscles would dance off his bones. He barely slept, the laser was on him more and more of the time and when it wasn't the telecoercive was there, battering into his mind, trying to break his barriers, trying to force him to surrender.
###
They'd followed every lead. They'd exhausted every avenue of investigation. They had bribed everyone they could find. If they could find anyone else to bribe, they'd have found a way to get the money, but they couldn't find anyone who even claimed to know anything.
Max's fear for Alec was a constant weight in her stomach, but the knowledge of Corrigan's MO was giving horrific specificity to her nightmares. She was losing hope. She had no intention of giving up, but the few leads they'd had they'd run down, and they'd gone nowhere. It wasn't that the trail was cold. There was no trail.
Their last hope had been slim: they had heard about a guy who knew a guy who knew an army staff sergeant who had been the lover of a high up at the original Manticore but had suddenly gone missing around the time Alec had been taken.
Six weeks after Alec's abduction, a grim-faced Luke had come into Max's office to tell her that the guy and the guy he knew had turned up dead and the staff sergeant was MIA.
That was it. Max felt her heart break as that last shred of hope slipped through her fingers. She held it together until Luke backed out of the room, then she dropped onto the couch and gave into her misery, allowing the sobs to wrack her body to exhaustion.
###
When Alec had promised himself he'd last as long as it took, he'd been banking on three weeks, maybe a month tops. Max had an army of highly trained transgenics, and despite how battered the hardware looked the computers had been tuned to state of the art perfection. He even grudgingly factored Logan into the armoury Max had at her disposal for effecting his rescue. Seven weeks (approximately, he couldn't be sure) seemed excessive, and frankly he was feeling a little put out by his continued captivity. Where the hell was his rescue team?
The good news was he was back in the cell and he hadn't been beaten or lasered for a couple of days. The bad news was he knew they were only giving him a break because they didn't want him getting desensitised. The other bad news was that Dobson knew how much he hated the cold, and that he wasn't getting a break from. He tried to look for another piece of good news. The only thing he could think of was that he wasn't really feeling all that hungry today.
Though that could obviously be interpreted as bad news too. It was never a good sign when something seemingly desirable was the opposite of what was actually needed, like having a fever and not sweating. He wasn't sure what the not feeling hungry meant, but he sure didn't think his increasingly visible ribs and jutting hip bones were feeling satisfied by a minimal amount of glucose by IV every couple of days. Still, he'd choose to take it as good news until he had evidence to the contrary.
It was hard to think of TC and not wonder if Max was still looking for him. After all, he was just one person. She had a whole camp to look out for. 435 transgenics and transhumans at his last count. That was a lot of work to keep them all in line.
Then there was the outside world. He had no idea what the situation was with the protesters, or if the army or the sector cops had tried anything. Or if White had picked himself up, dusted himself down and rededicated himself to his Kill All Transgenics mission.
He couldn't count on Max having the time or energy to devote to finding him. He of all people knew how well Manticore could cover his tracks. She'd probably run down the leads and found they led nowhere, then with guilt and a heavy heart – this was Max after all – had moved on to more pressing needs.
He couldn't fault her for that. Just because he loved her, it didn't mean she felt the same way. And his loyalty was not dependent on a return of his feelings. He'd accepted that from the outset, he just needed to realign his expectations. Max wasn't coming for him.
He'd stopped hoping for a chance to get free of his restraints, he was never alone long enough to try, and even if he could pick the locks, he couldn't escape with his leg like this, even if he did have the energy to scratch his nose, let alone stand, fight and run.
This wasn't about holding out for rescue or opportunity; it was about making sure they killed him before they broke him.
###
Gradually life was moving on in Terminal City. They were still listening, still intercepting whatever information they could, but they had no real leads and nowhere new to look. Max had no choice but to let business go back to normal. They had begun a clean-up of the most polluted areas; even transgenics and transhumans were starting to feel a little under the weather from the constant exposure so a few of the chemicals must have been so nasty that even they weren't totally immune. There was no progress on the public relations front so they had to make the best of what they had.
Max watched the activity around her and it was like she was moving in slow motion while they moved rapidly, like ants. She was out of step, she couldn't move on with them, she couldn't stop thinking about Alec, hoping with all her heart that he was still alive, even knowing what damage three months could have wrought. She couldn't bear to give up on the hope of seeing him again. Anything that had happened, everything that had been done to him she could fix if she could just hold him in her arms. She knew that, deep in her soul.
She began every day with equal parts hope and dread. Hope that today was finally the day that they'd hear something, that they'd find him. And dread that today was the day she'd find out he was lost to her forever, that he had died alone and in pain. That thought made it almost impossible for her to get out of bed and go to her office and go through the motions of still being CO. That thought fuelled her nightmares.
She knew the others were still hoping too, but human nature being what it was, the further removed from him they were, the easier it was for them to move on. Only a handful of them still pored over the transcripts of the hacks looking for that key word that would pop out and give them a place to start again.
Her closest friends, Alec's closest friends would not give up, ever. Not until they had definitive proof either way, and for that she was so grateful. She didn't know how she would have kept it together without Mole backing her authority, Luke and Dix keeping her up to date on the necessary business of TC when she got distracted. And there was the moral support from Joshua, Ralph, Gem, Dalton, Fixit, Zero and Bugler, all of whom wanted to talk about Alec, to keep his memory fresh, to remind each other of what he meant to them all.
She was surprised that Asha would call now and then, wanting to know if anything had developed, wanting to let Max know that she was still looking. She knew Asha and Alec had almost had a thing once upon a time, but she'd thought it hadn't gone anywhere, that Asha had seen through his carpe diem gambit and given him the brush-off. Maybe Asha felt some sense of obligation to Max for helping her out with the traitor in the S1W. Or maybe it was about Alec. Maybe Asha had seen through all his gambits, maybe she'd got a glimpse of the real Alec at some point too, and knew he was worth the trouble. Whatever the reason, Max would take any help she could get.
Sketchy's leads were never very reliable, but she'd kept him in the loop. You never knew; he'd had some scoops in the past after all, and it was always possible that he wouldn't understand the significance of a clue.
Original Cindy was frequently in touch, and as the air in TC became less toxic, she was around more and more, which Max was grateful for. OC was a wise old head and Max appreciated her support and advice. And it didn't hurt for the population of TC to see an Ordinary who wanted to hang with transgenics and wouldn't stare or judge.
Logan, too, was around TC, taking advantage of the improved atmosphere, but it was more and more strained between them. Max wanted to be friends with him, she'd cared about him for such a long time, but she knew he was still holding out for more, and she knew he was still looking for leads with a degree of reluctance, no matter that he carefully avoided saying anything negative about Alec, or her continued hope for his return.
###
Alec had never slept easily. He'd learned to control the physical manifestations of his nightmares at Manticore. If they'd seen him tossing and turning, if they'd seen him jerk awake, sweating and panting, they'd have sent him back to Psy-ops, or had him killed. Nightmares were evidence of psychological weakness as far as they were concerned. As far as Alec was concerned there was no way to live the life they did, to carry out those missions and not have nightmares. He couldn't stop them but he could control his body.
After Manticore, he still hadn't been able to shake those nightmares. He figured it was the price he paid for keeping his mask on during the day. If he was "always all right" in the waking world, the memories of death and blood and horror and pain had to come out somewhere.
And it was manageable when the nightmares could be chased away by the bright hopes Max had presented him with; the possibility of freedom, of redemption. The idea that he could be valued, could be worthy of friendship.
Now his waking world was the same as his dreaming one, it was wearing him down. He tried to hold onto those ideals she'd introduced him to, but they were drifting away from him day by day. It wasn't that he was tempted to return to the sort of pragmatic selfishness that had governed his life "BM", Before Max, it was too late for that, he'd come too far, he cared too much.
He just wanted so badly for the pain to end.
He couldn't remember silence any more, he couldn't remember peace. He'd held on to defiance as long as he could. He was trying so hard not to give in to the images and words repeating over and over in his mind.
All he could hold to now was the knowledge that he could not speak, he could never speak, because of the two words that he knew for sure were his: Max and Alec; her name and the name she'd given him. They were all that mattered, as long as he remembered those words he could resist Manticore's words and he wouldn't break. Max and Alec. Those names would save him.
###
Four months and two days. Max was still hoping for a break, almost anticipating it every morning, and crushed with disappointment every night, but when it came, she just wasn't expecting it.
A transgenic jumped the fence, only to collapse into unconsciousness on landing. She was taken to medical and treated for broken ribs and a gunshot wound to the back.
Max paced outside, and when the newcomer was conscious and well enough to talk, Max entered, intending to give the usual debrief: who did you know in Psy-ops, who have you talked to since Manticore went down, have you ever been approached by anyone wanting to start up Manticore again, have you seen anyone matching Alec's description.
Max was going through the motions as she had with fifty or more new arrivals since Callie's one useful lead, so she was almost casual when she started.
It took seconds before her heart was pounding in her chest, her hands shaking with adrenaline.
X6-727 hadn't been aware of the fire at Manticore. She'd been stationed in DC, but had suddenly been extracted from her mission and ordered to report to an outpost in Virginia. She'd remained there until a week ago, when she'd been accused of insubordination for punching one of the human guards who'd tried to grope her. She'd been tasered and beaten by the guard and his buddies and was about to be dragged off to Psy-ops when she'd managed to make a break for it and had just escaped with her life.
On the outside, she'd discovered that the Virginia outpost was all that remained of Manticore. She'd seen news coverage of the siege at TC and had made her way to Seattle, looking for help and strength in numbers.
Who had she had contact with? She knew Corrigan. In Virginia he was known as Dobson. He was second in command and was in charge of Psy-ops.
Had she seen anyone matching Alec's description? Yes. She'd been there when he'd tried to escape a few months back. Impressive, he was really beat up, but he'd got in a decent blow to her sternum she'd still been feeling days later. She looked away when Max made her go through the whole story in detail. He'd knocked out one of the doctors and taken down her partner with a sedative shot the doc was supposed to have used on him. Then a human guard – actually, the same asshole who'd tried to grope her – Alec had knocked him out with a head-butt when the asshole spat on him. The other guard had pistol whipped him then, but she'd been the one to restrain him finally.
In this place, this new world, recovering from her wounds due to the ministrations of other transgenics, including a former Psy-ops telecoercive, and telling her story to X5-452, the legend who'd escaped as a child, X6-727 was feeling suddenly ashamed of her actions, wanted to justify herself, to explain she was only following orders.
She looked up and her words died on her lips. There wasn't blame there, or anger, at least not for her. Only hope, and eyes shining with tears. 452's – Max's – voice was a whisper.
"Is he alive?"
"I think so. He was still there last I heard."
Continues soon...
Reviews make me ridiculously cheerful. Go on, make my day!
16