The Blackest White
By Inzane
Disclaimer: I lay no claim to Dark Angel or its characters. I do this only for fun.
Summary: The best way to destroy an enemy is to strike at his heart. Sequel to "The Friggin' Cure."
A/N: Because I was so late with the last chapter, I busted my ass to get this one finished in a timely fashion. Fortunately, the muse was cooperating. Let's hope the trend continues.
Warning: The violence level is going to ratchet up to a higher level from this point on.
Chapter 3: Shattered World
Alec walked back to the apartment he shared with Max with a smile on his face and a much lighter heart. He took his time, enjoying the soft hush the snow made as it fell, the way it quieted everything down until the sounds of the city almost disappeared. It made him wish once more that Max was by his side.
Maxie rarely put the leadership thing on pause to enjoy the simple things in life. She was too wrapped up in being the leader everyone needed her to be--dedication and duty to a fault, his Max. It would've been nice to convince her to set the weight of their transgenic world aside, if only for a little while, to take a walk with him in the snow.
There would still be time. Max was due back tomorrow, and Joshua was certain that they hadn't seen the last of the snow this winter. The way those clouds had looked, they might have another snowfall before the week was out.
The next time it snowed, he'd make sure they both set leadership aside so they could take that walk together. The next time it snowed, he thought he might be able to find the courage to slip that ring on her finger.
Alec slowed to a stop in the center of the Quad, the smile on his face turning into a full-fledged grin. Feeling like a kid again--or, rather, the kid he had never been allowed to be--he tilted his head back and stuck out his tongue to catch falling snowflakes.
A laugh bubbled up from inside of him. A couple of years ago, he never would've dreamed that he'd be standing out in the snow, catching snowflakes on his tongue as he waited for the woman he loved to come home.
Crazy, how much life had changed.
Max wasn't sure how much time had passed. Minutes. Hours, for all she knew. She couldn't think. Her head felt like it had been run over by a freight train. The pain in her skull was so intense, she almost wished that someone would put a bullet in it and put her out of her misery. To make matters worse, someone kept spinning the world on her. She'd already thrown up twice.
She was moving before she even realized that the goons in black were dragging her. She struggled to make her eyes to focus, tried to ignore the pain, because if she didn't, she was screwed. They were all screwed, sideways.
Something loomed in her peripheral vision. The storage shed. They were taking her inside the storage shed. That was probably a bad thing.
As they dragged her to the threshold, the light coming from inside the shed seared her eyeballs and spiked into her brain. She clenched them shut and fought down the nausea rising in her throat.
She heard someone start up the truck as a dog barked wildly. She'd forgotten about the dog. There was a yelp of pain followed by the scrabbling of claws, and the animal brushed past her as it bolted toward freedom. Smart dog. Then she heard gravel crunching as the truck was backed out of the shed.
Underneath all of this was the sound of an argument. Nelson, or whatever his name really was, arguing with someone. Something about money, a deal.
The bastard had sold them out.
"Dump the truck where it won't be found for a while." That was White. No mistaking that voice.
"Wait just a goddamn minute! That wasn't part of the deal."
"I think this is the part where I say, 'I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further.'"
'Huh?"
"Doesn't anyone watch the classics anymore?"
"Look, White..."
Max heard White heave an exasperated sigh. "I don't have time for this. Zimmerman?"
"Sir." A clipped response. Strong, female.
"Please see to our… friend."
"Right away, sir."
Max knew what was coming, even if that idiot Nelson didn't. Never make a deal with the devil.
It wasn't long before she heard the muffled sound of two bullets thudding into something solid. She couldn't manage to muster up enough emotion to feel sorry for him. Then the world tilted and she was moving again.
She stumbled over her feet, unable to control her own body. Whoever was dragging her finally let her fall in a heap on the ground. The rag doll, discarded.
She needed a moment, just a moment to pull herself together, but they wouldn't even give her that. Someone grabbed her arm and yanked, pulling her until she was back on her knees.
Nila's vehement and somewhat slurred curse from off to her right reminded her that she wasn't in this alone. Nila, Brand, Kai, and Jin--she'd drag them down with her, all because White had a sudden desire to get his vengeance on.
Kel would've called for backup by now. He would've seen what had happened and called for help. She needed to hang on for a little while longer, just a couple of minutes to get her brain working enough so she could stall…
"I know what you're thinking."
No time. No fucking time.
Max's eyelids fluttered. When she managed to open them enough that she could see, she wished that she hadn't. Ames White was standing over her with his hands in his pockets and a smug look on his face. There were several things that she would've liked to have said to him in that moment, but she couldn't speak. Her tongue felt thick and swollen, and it stuck to the roof her mouth like plaster.
"You're thinking," White continued, squatting down until he was eye level with her, "that your young friend up on the ridge is calling the cavalry as we speak, and all you need to do is hold out until your friends come riding to the rescue."
Max blinked, slow, as it took a moment for her fuzzy brain to process this information.
He's bluffing. Please, let him be bluffing.
If White was bluffing, then he was one hell of a poker player. His face gave nothing away. He turned his head toward one of his men and gave a slight nod--some kind of signal.
Max jerked back as a body was thrown down in between her and White. Boyish face. Sandy blonde hair, short and curly. Blue-gray eyes that stared at her, accusing even in death, as blood slowly pooled under his body from a gaping exit wound in his throat. He'd been shot from behind.
Kel.
White reached forward to push a strand of hair out of her eyes, the move in no way sexual yet repulsively intimate. The grin was still on his face, but his eyes were cold. "Can't have anyone interrupting our party, now can we?"
He was dead. Kel--their last hope--was dead.
White's face doubled, then tripled, continuing to multiply until it became a blur. Then Max's eyes rolled up into her head and she surrendered to darkness.
She awoke with a jerk, sputtering as a bucket of ice cold water hit her face.
"Rise and shine, 452."
"Sonofabitch," Max groaned as she forced her eyes to open.
The drugs had worn off enough so that the room was no longer spinning, but some sadistic bastard was still taking a jackhammer to her head, and the rest of her body felt like it was encased in lead.
She could have tried to fight it, but it was a lost cause. She could tell that too much of the drug was still in her system. She would be better off conserving her strength until the right opportunity presented itself.
She managed to roll onto her side and saw that Kel's body had been tossed against the far wall, discarded like so much trash. The Familiars hadn't even bothered to close his eyes.
When she shifted her gaze to her right, she saw that White had the others lined up and on their knees again; the man had to be on some kind of power trip thing. Each of them swayed slightly as if the room kept tilting on them. Looked like they weren't fairing any better under the drug than she was.
They were all bruised and bloody. Jin's one arm was bent at an unnatural angle. Aside from being beat to hell, Kai and Nila didn't seem to have any major injuries. Brand appeared to have taken the most damage.
His one eye was a bloody mess and horribly swollen. It looked like his eye socket and cheekbone had been shattered. If--when, she told herself, when--they made it out of this, he'd probably lose the eye. He was hunched over, most likely trying to protect ribs that were broken. His one shoulder looked funny; it was hard to tell with his hands cuffed behind his back, but his arm had to be dislocated.
Seeing him that way made flashes of the fight came back to her, things that her scrambled brain hadn't been able to process at the time. Brand had tried to protect her. White's men had made him pay for it.
A sudden flash in her peripheral vision made her shift her eyes to the left, and her head pounded in protest. White had slipped off his trench coat. His suit jacket soon followed. Max managed a bitter laugh as she struggled to push herself up without the use of her hands.
"Gonna rough me up, now, Ames?"
This made White pause and give her a considering look. Then the corner of his mouth turned up in a wry smile. "That was my original thought, yes. But why do things the hard way? You could make this easier on both of us by telling me what I want to know."
"If there's one thing I've never been…" Max said, pausing a moment to catch her breath and flip the wet hair out of her eyes, "it's easy."
White's smile turned sour. "Cute. You can drop the tough girl act, 452. It won't do you any good."
"I dunno. Got me this far."
"Enough of this. Get her up," White said, motioning to one of his men. "I can't keep talking to her like this. I'll get a crick in the neck."
Max yelped as someone grabbed her by the upper arms and yanked, causing her shoulders to scream in their sockets. The other transgenics made protesting noises, but they were quickly silenced by the Familiars guarding them. Max's stomach heaved, and she actually wished she had something left in it to throw up, because she would've gladly lost her lunch right there on Ames White's shoes.
White stepped in until they were only inches apart. He looked into her eyes, and she could see that there would be no stalling. White wanted something from her, and he didn't appear to be in the mood to wait.
"I know," White said, his voice low and quiet and all the more menacing for it, "that it won't be long before your friends come looking for you. Before 494 comes looking. As much as I'd like to get reacquainted with that particular individual, I'm afraid I don't have the time, so let's cut to the chase, shall we?" He reached forward and grabbed the edges of Max's jacket, pulling her a little closer. "Where is my son?"
Max blinked, drawing her head back in surprise. "What?" She hadn't been expecting that. She was surprised he even cared. Ames didn't really strike her as Father of the Year material.
"Did I stutter? My son, 452. I want my son."
"I don't know where he is," Max replied. It wasn't a lie. Logan had worked his Eyes Only mojo to handle the whole Ray situation. She'd stayed out of it. The kid was safe, and that was all she figured she needed to know.
White shook his head at her. "Why don't I believe you?"
"How 'bout 'cause you're a self-righteous, egotistical asshole?"
One second, White was smiling that sick, shark-like smile at her. The next, she was doubling over, buckling from the fist he had slammed into her stomach. The Familiar holding her let go, and she fell to her knees, retching.
"Leave her alone!" Brand yelled, then cried out in pain as a Familiar clamped a hand down on his dislocated shoulder.
White stared down at her, the hands at his sides clenched into fists. "Tell me what I want to know."
Breathing hard and unable to straighten up to look at him, Max shook her head, the ends of her hair brushing the floor, leaving wet trails on the concrete. "He's better off without you."
A pair of shiny wingtips came into her vision, and she braced herself as best she could for another assault. White squatted down, placing his hands on either side of her head. She thought for a moment that he was going to snap her neck and be done with it, but instead he tilted her head back gently, pushing the hair out of her eyes so he could look at her face.
He had been about to say something, but he stopped and reconsidered. He turned his head and looked at the other transgenics, all lined up like bloodied ducks in a row. A slow smile came across his face, and when he turned back to Max, there was a glint in his eyes that she didn't like.
"Are you willing to bet their lives on that?" he said quietly, with a small nod toward her bound brethren.
Max's heart began to pound in earnest. "I don't know where his is."
White released her and stood up, backing away from her. "Really," he said in the same way he would've said bullshit. Then he turned and walked down the line, heading toward Jin at the end.
"I don't know!" Maxed repeated, her voice rising in panic. She tried to get up, but the Familiar behind her clamped a hand on her shoulder and shoved her back down. "I swear to God, White, I don't know where Ray is." Oh God, Oh God, please don't.
White's lips became a thin line. "Seems to me like you're having a little problem remembering."
Max shook her head, and the room started spinning again. "Don't do this."
White stopped in front of Jin, staring down at the dark-haired transgenic. Jin returned the stare, his jaw clenched tight. If he could face the worst Manticore had to offer, he could face this.
White turned his head, raising an eyebrow at Max. "Let's see if I can jog your memory."
"No, wait!" Max yelled, struggling as best she could against the hand holding her down, but it didn't do any good. Without any fanfare, White pulled his gun and fired a bullet into Jin's head.
The four transgenics that were still breathing all jerked at the sound of White's un-silenced gun. All four looked on in shock as Jin's body crumpled to the ground. Kai's jaw began to quiver, then a low moan rumbled in the back of his throat. Feeling like he had been ripped in two, Kai threw back his head and let out a howl of rage over his fallen twin.
Blood began to pool on the concrete under Jin's head. It looked almost too red to be real, like any second some guy with a clack board was going to come in and yell Cut!, and Jin would sit up and have a laugh over his very convincing death scene.
But the scene didn't end.
White took a deliberate step back from the spreading pool. There was no need to mess up a perfectly good pair of shoes.
Max's face was red with rage. Her blood was pumping, and adrenalin was flooding through her system. "Dammit, White, I told you, I don't know anything! I wasn't involved in the rest of it. You didn't have to kill him!"
Ames held the gun down at his side. "Logan Cale was involved."
Max clamped her jaw shut. Even though she and Logan weren't on the best of terms--or any terms, these days--she couldn't sell him out. "I don't know anything."
"So you didn't happen to overhear anything about where he sent my son? He didn't let something slip while whispering sweet nothings in your ear?"
"No."
White tilted his head at her. "Are you sure?"
Before Max had a chance to blink, White fired two rounds in quick succession. Kai and Nila fell to the floor.
Angry tears began to roll down Max's face. The fingers of the hand holding her down dug painfully into her shoulder as she struggled. "You bastard!"
"Careful, 452. That's my mother you're talking about."
"I'm going to fucking kill you, you sonofabitch!"
"Such language," White said, scolding. "I really don't think that's appropriate talk for a young lady."
He paced for a minute, thinking. 452 was being predictably stubborn, which secretly pleased him. What fun would it have been if she'd told him where Ray was right off the bat? She'd been a thorn in his side too long for him to lose the opportunity for a little payback. Still, time was short. Someone would eventually come looking, and he wanted to be long gone before that happened.
There had to be a way to break her.
White stopped and turned back toward Max. "It seems that this isn't working. How about we try a new tactic?" he said, then shot Brand in the leg.
"Stop it!" Max yelled, struggling in earnest now. The adrenalin in her system was beginning to counteract the drug.
"Don't tell him anything, Max," Brand hissed through clenched teeth.
"What a brave soldier." White looked at Max expectantly. "Still don't remember anything?"
"Just stop," she cried, shaking her head.
"No? That's too bad," White said, then shot Brand in the gut. The X5 grunted in pain, but refused to cry out. White might try to use him as a weapon against Max, but that didn't mean he had to cooperate.
Surrounded by the dead, Max's protests became frantic, almost unintelligible. It didn't really matter, though, because White wasn't listening. The Familiar had his own agenda, and mercy was definitely not on it.
White raised his gun again, ready to go for the coup de grâce. Before he could pull the trigger, Max surged to her feet, lunging toward him.
The affects of the drug had worn off, but not enough. She was still too sluggish. She crashed into White, but she didn't have enough momentum to take him down. It threw off his aim, and instead of shooting Brand in the head, the bullet buried itself high in his chest, near the heart. Brand swayed for a moment, his face blank, before he crumpled to the ground to join his fallen brethren.
Two other Familiars rushed forward and yanked Max away from White. One of them caught her with a swiping kick to the knee; it flared with pain as her MCL gave way. She crashed to the ground, and someone grabbed her hair and yanked her head back. A figure loomed in her vision, but all she saw was the fist that was about to plant itself in her face. Whoever it was got in a couple of good blows before she heard White's voice yell out, "Enough!"
The Familiars backed away, giving her a clear view of White. His goons must've hit her pretty hard, because at first she saw two of him. There was a look of extreme irritation on his face. As he reached up to straighten his tie, the two Whites merged back into one.
Seething with tightly controlled anger, White ejected the clip from his gun and closely inspected it, checking the number of rounds. "I must say, I'm very disappointed in you. I had thought that you cared about your fellow transgenics more than that. I guess I was wrong."
With a snap, White slapped the cartridge back into the gun, then chambered a round. He pointed the gun at Max's head.
"One last chance, 452. Tell me where my son is, or I will put a bullet in that pretty little head of yours."
Max's throat was constricted with grief. Even if she had known where Ray was, even if she had been willing to give up a child to a murderer in order to save herself, she wouldn't have been able to speak the words.
The physical pain she felt was nothing compared to what she felt over the loss of her crew. Five people that had lost their lives because of her, because she'd handpicked them for this mission. Dead because of her, because of what she had done almost two years ago.
A tear ran down her cheek, but for once, she wasn't ashamed of it. It was a tear for Kel. For Kai and Jin, Nila and Brand. It was a tear for Alec and the future they would no longer share. The last goddamn tear she would ever cry.
The Familiar was still waiting for his answer. She would give him one.
Max sucked in a deep breath. She held it, pausing to give him a bloody smile before she spat a mouthful of blood all over the front of Ames White's shirt.
White's face darkened. He should've known the bitch wouldn't cooperate.
"Have it your way," he said, and squeezed the trigger.
When the bullet exploded from the barrel, the sound of it amplified as it bounced around the walls of the storage shed--a violent symphony of death.
Max never flinched.
With a strangled gasp, Alec sat bolt upright in bed, eyes wide and searching. His hand immediately slipped under the mattress at his side to pull out the SIG P239 he kept there in case of emergency, automatically clicking off the safety and training the gun on the doorway.
He had no idea what woke him from a deep sleep, but better safe than dead. His instincts told him to first consider the possibility of an intruder, but he quickly nixed that explanation. All of his senses told him that no one was there. Besides, there was no way that anyone who didn't belong could get this far into Terminal City unchallenged, so the odds of an intruder were practically nonexistent.
So why was his heart pounding so hard that it physically hurt?
Relaxing his tense muscles, Alec lowered the gun. Grimacing, he rubbed his hand over his heart, feeling its pounding beat through his skin.
It must've been a bad dream. Had to be.
It had been a while since he'd had a bad dream. He used to have nightmares about losing Max, but those has died down after a while. Months of inactivity was boring as hell, but it took the paranoia level down by a good notch or two. He used to have nightmares all the time when he was little, but he'd quickly trained himself not to show any sign. He'd seen what happened to the other kids that woke up screaming. Eventually, he'd been able to train himself not to dream at all while he was at Manticore.
To be on the safe side (and, even though she wasn't there, to prove to Max that he did know how to be cautious on occasion), Alec hopped out of bed and took a quick tour of the apartment, and then the hall. As he suspected, no one was there.
Alec shook his head at himself, clicking the safety back on his gun. It was too late to be up looking for boogeymen in the shadows.
With a yawn, he shuffled back into the bedroom. Thank God tonight would be the last night he would sleep alone. It definitely didn't agree with him.
Letting the gun fall to the floor, he fell face first down onto the bed and into oblivion.
The truck bed shook as Zimmerman dumped the last of the bodies into the large cooling unit, which was concealed by a false front of wooden shipping crates. It wouldn't do to draw attention to themselves if their cargo started to stink.
She closed the lid with a snap, securing the lock before she lowered the false top that concealed the unit. She hopped down, nodding her thanks as she took the rag White handed her. He had changed his bloodied shirt for a clean one. She grimaced as she wiped transgenics' blood off her hands; she knew exactly how he felt.
"You know what to do," White said, more of a command than a question.
"Yes, sir," she replied with a sharp nod, straightening to attention.
Zimmerman climbed into the cab of the truck, her face determined. She turned the key in the ignition, then waited for the rest of her crew to climb in the back.
They had an important mission, and she was going to personally guarantee that it went off without a hitch.
Alec ducked barely in time to avoid the missile speeding toward his head. It smacked against the wall behind him, its velocity causing it to explode and shower snow down on him.
He smiled as he reached down to grab more snow for his own missile, yelling out, "You'll have to do better than that, children!"
A flurry of snowballs crashed into the wall and the burned out car he was currently taking refuge behind. None of them hit their well-concealed target, but the "shrapnel" that resulted had him covered in snow.
"How's that for better?!" he heard Dalton call out. He and a crew of Sixes had taken over the Quad and had been waging snow battles of epic proportion all morning long. So far, they had repelled all comers.
Alec looked up at Joshua, who was crouched down beside him behind the car. "You ready to make a move?" he asked, the pockets of his coat as well as both hands now loaded with ammunition.
"Always ready," Joshua shot back; the line made Alec smile.
"Go!" Alec yelled, and sprung out from behind the car, firing two snowballs as he went.
Joshua laid down covering fire while Alec ran across the Quad, blurring toward the cover of an old Dumpster. Before he got there, Kazi and two other Sixes popped out from inside of it and peppered him with snowballs.
Alec grabbed his chest and flopped back dramatically in the snow. Laughing, he waved an arm for lack of a white flag and yelled "I surrender! I surrender!"
Dalton, Oscar, and three more X6s came out from behind the low wall bordering the Quad. "That'll teach you to encroach on our territory!" Kazi cried triumphantly, hopping down from the Dumpster to stand over him, victorious.
"Yeah!" Dalton echoed, stepping up behind her. Looking down at his fallen brother, his face transformed from triumph to mischief. He gave Alec a wink, then reached up and tugged on the collar of Kazi's coat, dumping a load of snow down her back.
Kazi half-screamed, half-laughed, "I'm gonna kill you, Dalton!" and chased after him. The snowball fight then devolved into boys against girls, with the boys taking heavy damage. They may have been stronger on average, but transgenic girls fight dirty.
Suddenly, a hand was offered, and Alec looked up to see Joshua standing over him. Alec grabbed his wrist, and the big transhuman tugged him to his feet. Alec brushed off his coat, then leaned over and scrubbed his hands through his hair to shake off the snow.
A bubbling, girlish laugh drew his attention. Straightening, he saw Dalton on the other side of the Quad, spinning around with Kazi on his back. Both of them were laughing uncontrollably, their cheeks were rosy from cold and exertion.
God, they were so young. Had he and Max ever been that young?
"I wish Max were here," he said to Joshua with a sigh. "She's missing out on all the fun." The temperature was already rising; he was afraid the snow would be gone before she got back.
"Don't worry," Joshua said, patting him on the shoulder. "Will snow again."
"I sure hope so. She's been stressing so much lately. She could use a little down ti… hey!!" Alec yelped, his thought cut off by the handful of snow Joshua dumped down the back of his neck. He turned, but Joshua was already on the run.
"You are dead meat, pal!" Alec shouted, then dove for cover as a snowball whizzed past his ear.
Later that afternoon, after a hot shower and a change of clothes, Alec found himself pacing near the Communications station in Command.
"Check it again," he said, chewing nervously on the side of his thumbnail.
Max and her team hadn't checked in. The communications blackout should've ended about an hour ago, but they still hadn't checked in.
"I ran a diagnostic," Luke said, his fingers tapping over the keyboard as he brought the results up on screen. "Everything's working within normal parameters."
"I said check it again," Alec snapped. Each tick of the clock brought him closer to panic.
"Okay," Luke said defensively, typing in the command that would run the diagnostic.
"What's up?" Mole asked, coming over to stand beside Luke. He left a good bit of distance between himself and Alec, because the X5 was radiating waves of tension, and experience had taught him that tense X5s could be unpredictable. Especially tense X5s named Alec.
Alec's eyes were glued on the screen, tracking the results of the diagnostic. "Max hasn't checked in."
Mole looked down at Luke for an explanation. Luke shrugged. "They could still be jamming," he said, preferring that explanation to any other. Any other explanation would mean trouble, and he didn't like the idea of trouble. They'd all had enough of it to last two lifetimes.
"Could be," Mole said, nodding, but he had a bad feeling. He kept it to himself, because Alec was clearly on edge, and one wrong word could send him riding to Max's rescue. They needed to be sure there was a problem before they risked exposure trying to save a crew that may not actually need saving.
"I don't like it," Alec snapped, and he turned to go and do God only knew what, but Mole stopped him, grabbing his arm.
"You know, you and Max didn't exactly part on the best of terms," he said quietly. Normally, those words would've been a dig, but he could see that Alec was already upset enough as it was. "Maybe she doesn't want to talk."
Alec stilled. The thought had crossed his mind. Max had been pretty upset, and no one could say that the woman didn't know how to hold a grudge. But then why didn't she have Brand or one of the others check in? No, something was wrong.
Seeing that Alec was not convinced, Mole tightened his hand around the X5's bicep. "She's only a couple of hours overdue, man. We can't jump the gun on this. If Flanagan calls and can't find either of you, we're all fucked."
Alec's face hardened. Mole could see that the man inside of him was battling with the leader. The leader won, for now.
"Two hours," he said, poking Mole in the chest. "Then I go looking."
Dix frowned. "Not again," he grumbled as he checked the connection wires for the third time. The display didn't change. Camera Fourteen was still out.
"Sonofabitch!"
"Cameras still on the fritz?" Wil asked as he came over to stand behind the transhuman. Dix had spent hours fixing the shorted out display (and Alec was damned lucky he was still breathing, too), but maybe there were still a few bugs to work out.
"No." Dix snapped, staring down at the offending screen as if he could scare it into submission. "I've checked the connections three times. And before you ask, it's a brand new multiplexer, so it can't be that. There's nothing wrong with the system."
"Maybe the problems on the other end," Will offered. "We've had cameras go bad before."
Dix narrowed his eyes and stared down at the screen. "Wait a minute," he said. He sat down, hands flying over the keys in a blur. All of the sudden, he stopped.
"Mole!" he yelled.
"What?" came a muffled response. Mole was down the hall in the armory, but transgenic hearing made intercoms a moot point.
"We have a situation," Dix yelled back, and everything in Command stopped.
Mole had to push his way, none-to-gently, through a group of transgenics that had gathered around the surveillance station. "What situation?"
"I think we're being jammed," Dix said, pointing to the snowy display. "Camera Fourteen."
"Fourteen? That's the South tunnel," Wil said.
"This can't be good," Mole said as he pulled out his radio. "Alec, Mole. You copy?" Alec had gone off somewhere to keep himself occupied until his two hours were up.
Loud and clear, Alec responded instantly. He must've been sitting somewhere with his radio in hand, waiting for news.
"We have a problem."
The team? The tension in Alec's voice was as clear as the signal.
"Negative. We think someone might be jamming the camera in the South tunnel. Could be maybe the camera's on the fritz, but I plan to take Wil and Dix, check it out."
Grab Zev and one of her crew while you're at it. I'll meet you there.
"Affirmative. Mole out." The scaled transhuman turned to Will and Dix, all business. "Let's go."
Alec jogged down the ramp of the South tunnel, relieved that he had something to do. He had another forty-five minutes until his deadline, and he needed something to distract him until then, or he was pretty sure he was going to go crazy.
He slowed as he caught sight of Trix, one of Zev's crew, sitting with her back to the tunnel wall, her arms wrapped around her legs and a dazed look on her face. Her dark hair hung down into her eyes, and she was shaking. Alec's face blanked as he went into soldier mode, pulling his gun and scanning the tunnel for threats. "Trix? You okay?"
Trix looked up at the sound of his voice. She didn't speak, but there was a haunted look in her eyes, and it scared him. He gave her a quick once over, looking for injuries, but she seemed okay, so he moved with stealth past her into the tunnel beyond.
He stopped so abruptly it was like he had hit an invisible wall. His arms fell to his sides, the gun slipping from his hand to clatter against the floor.
Mole, Wil, Dix, and Zev--they were all standing there, guns in hand but pointing at the ground, so shocked that they couldn't move. Beyond them was the reason why. Beyond them was the thing that made his whole world stop.
A pile of bodies, stacked in a jumbled heap without care to the fact that they were once living beings. The lights of the tunnel made the red blood glisten; the smell of it was overpowering. Alec's brain processed features, recognizing but not wanting to recognize. A hand here. A bruised cheekbone there. A fall of dark hair. Then the enormity of what he was seeing hit him all at once.
Max's crew, tangled together in a pile of broken flesh. And on the top, draped almost lovingly, was a woman. The back of her neck was raw and bloody. Dark, blood-soaked hair concealed her face.
Alec forced himself to approach, his movements robotic as his body fought him. He didn't want to see, but he had to. He had to see.
"Alec, don't..." Zev protested, but Mole caught her by the arm and pulled her away.
"Leave him be," he whispered.
Alec's hand shook as he reached forward to brush aside the hair covering the woman's face. He knew what he would see, but he clung to the hope that it wouldn't be her face, wouldn't be her dead eyes staring back at him.
Hope, it turned out, was a cold-hearted bitch.
"Damn," Mole murmured from somewhere behind him, but the word didn't register. As Alec's own heartbeat pounded in his ears, the rest of the world fell away. All that existed for him was that face--one he knew better than his own. Battered and bloody, but still beautiful, with a hole no bigger than the tip of his index finger in the center of her forehead.
Max's face.
His eyes were drawn to a note pinned to her back, the white paper stained with her blood. Alec snatched at the note and drew it closer, his pupils dilating as his vision zoomed in to read the words in the weak light of the tunnel.
Thought I'd return these to you. I won't be needing them any more. I did keep their barcodes as a souvenir of our time together. Hope you don't mind.
We will meet again, 494. Next time, you won't be so lucky.
The note slipped from his hands and fluttered to the floor. White. Fucking White.
Alec backed away slowly, shaking his head, unable to take his eyes off of that face. Those eyes. "No," he whispered.
This couldn't be happening. Not now. Not after everything that they had been through. It couldn't end like this.
He stopped and stared down into those glazed-over eyes, trying to make sense of it all. But it didn't make sense. It couldn't. He would not accept a world where something like this made sense.
This was not happening.
Wil came up behind him. "I'm sorry, Alec," he said quietly, placing a hand on Alec's shoulder.
Alec shrugged it off with a sudden, violent motion, which had Mole stepping forward in case he needed to intervene. Alec tore his eyes away from the body to look beseechingly at the transhuman. "It's not her," he said, eyes burning with an intensity that bordered on fanatic.
"Alec..." Mole said, his voice gentle in a way that even he hadn't known he was capable of. He didn't know what to say. There was nothing anyone could say that would make something like this better.
"I'm telling you, it's not her," Alec repeated. His wide eyes shifted frantically, unfocused, as he searched for an explanation. Then they snapped back to Mole, bright with new purpose. "It's Sam. It has to be Sam."
"Look, man... I know this is hard, but you have to face facts. She's wearing the same clothes. She's with the crew. There's no other logical explanation."
"I don't care. It's not Max."
Mole reached forward and clasped Alec by the shoulders, staring into his eyes as if he could somehow bore the truth into the X5's brain. "You not wanting it to be her won't make it not her."
Alec's gaze was unflinching as he met Mole's stare, but the rest of him was wracked by fine tremors. "Yes it will," he said, and his voice broke on the words.
"Hey, you guys!" Zev called out excitedly. She and Dix had been moving the bodies, laying them out so they could at least be dignified in death, when she had felt a hint of a pulse. "Brand's still alive!"
Alec surged forward and pushed Zev and Dix aside, placing a hand on either side of Brand's head. "Brand, look at me. Look at me. That's a fucking order!" Brand's one eye was swollen shut, but the other rolled in the socket until it stilled, trying to focus on his SIC. Alec leaned in closer. "Where's Max?"
"Alec," Zev said, softly pleading as she tugged at his arm. "We need to get him to Medical."
Alec ignored her. His focus was totally on Brand. "Where is she?" Alec repeated, his voice a harsh and angry.
Brand's eye rolled, tracking across the tunnel until it came to land on the bodies. He licked lips that were cracked and dry. "M'sorry," he gasped, "Tried... c-couldn't... protect her…" then his eye fluttered, and he passed out.
"No!" Alec cried out, shaking Brand's head a little to try to revive him. Wil and Dix grabbed him and pulled him off. Alec struggled against their grip, all the while shouting down at Brand. "She's not dead! You tell me where she is! She's not dead!" He threw off Wil and Dix and was surging forward to try to get more information from Brand when he ran into a solid, scaly green brick wall.
"That's enough!" Mole said and slammed Alec back against the wall of the tunnel; he had to fist his hands in Alec's coat and shove him back to keep him there. It was a good thing that Alec wasn't thinking straight; Mole knew that he was no match for Alec at hand to hand. He had to handle the situation while he still could.
"Dix! Wil! Get Brand to Medical! Zev, deal with Trix," he shouted at them, then turned his attention back to Alec. His heart clenched as he saw the raw fear in his friend's red-rimmed eyes.
"She's not dead, Mole. She's not." Alec repeated, his voice desperately insistent.
"I want to believe you, man. I really do. But what are the odds? That's the whole crew. That's Brand, not a clone. Brand was with Max. He even said that…"
"I don't care what he said," Alec interrupted. His words were frantic and fast, sentences running together in his intense need to make Mole see the truth. "I don't care what the odds are, I'm telling you, that's Sam, not Max. White's got her somewhere, some secret base or something, and he swapped bodies, killed Sam and swapped clothes, made it look like Max. That's why he kept the barcodes, to cover it up. Max is still alive. She's out there, and I've got to find her."
Mole gave Alec a rough shake, taking out some of his own anger and grief on his friend. "Do you hear yourself? This is crazy!"
"She needs me, Mole," Alec said, his eyes begged, Believe me. "She's not dead. She's not."
Mole shook his head. "How could you possibly know that?"
Alec exploded, shoving Mole away from him and sending him crashing into the opposite wall of the tunnel. "Because I'd know!" he shouted, his words echoing off the walls. "I'd know if she was gone, goddammit!" He turned away, shoulders sagging. His words were quieter, almost defeated, as if he knew he should doubt but couldn't quite bring himself to do it. "I'd just know."
His eyes burned as he turned back toward the body, which Zev had laid out on the floor. Sam's body, he told himself. Sam.
He knelt down and picked her up in his arms, the weight and feel of her so familiar, but not familiar, not her. He cradled the body against him, telling himself over and over that it was not her, not Max, as he carried a dead woman with Max's face out into the light.
A/N: Chew on that, my pretties!
