Chapter 3

"The best things in life are never rationed. Friendship, loyalty, love, do not require coupons." (Unknown)

So it turned out, this 'Max' was a real sadistic bastard, and Alec still had no idea what in particular he wanted. What he did know was that he didn't have any qualms about hurting prisoners; rather he seemed to enjoy it. He didn't bother getting his own hands dirty though, invariably ordering some lesser minion to do the 'hard work'.

Alec recognized Wade's style: definitely a Familiar, very likely ex-Phalanx, although some of the others he brought with him, while having a Familiar's strength, didn't seem to have quite the same level of training in utter brutality. It didn't leave him a lot of options. For the minute he was out-numbered, outgunned and he had no means to escape. He worked instead on finding out all he could and waiting until he could play an advantage. He was also trying to keep his own injuries to a minimum; pride be damned, tactically he played up his injuries; 'passing out' from pain, submitting under the brutality. These bastards weren't like White's team, it seemed they had little direct experience with X5 tolerance and so for the minute, they were under the impression he was far more hurt than in reality was the case.

It wasn't an advantage yet, but if he played his cards right and took a chance when it came along, they would be seriously underestimating just what he could still do. None of which was to say that he wasn't injured, of course. He was keeping a mental tally of the worst of the damage and what allowances or adaptations he'd need to make in any forthcoming forays. He needed to know more, so he played his part and he listened, trying to glean information from the exchanges he heard around him. Apart from his megalomaniacal tendencies to monologue on world domination, Max gave little away. Wade was arrogant and sadistic, but he submitted it seemed without question to Max's orders. It left Alec to the assumption that Max too had to be a Familiar.

There'd been no mention of White or the Phalanx and there were moments when Alec wondered if they were some sort of breakaway group, in the same way Sandeman had had his connections but had then headed for his Manticore days, before leaving that too behind him. Questions abounded and answers weren't forthcoming with any ease. Alec had no idea what he was going to do with any he did acquire.

He sat, head back against the bars, eyes closed, and wondered, how much longer he could last. The dropping temperature was taking its toll, sapping his energy, dulling his reflexes, and slowing his thinking. The pain of injuries that couldn't heal in these conditions combined with the burn of muscles tired from being in the same position too long. His time was running out slowly.

He was holding on, trying to fight the urge to give up, trying to find a way out. He owed it to 'his' Max, 452 who held the fate of the Transgenics in her hands. He owed it to all the Transgenics holed up in Terminal City, and those still running, trying to find freedom and safety.

Jensen had been almost hoarse by the time he'd shared all the information he'd found. His team-mates had moved the discussion onto ways in which they could contact 494, and that was why in the early hours of the morning two days' later, Cougar was slipping silently through the streets round Terminal City, trying to find some safe way of making contact with the people on the inside.

He slid unnoticed from shadow to shadow; taking note of the patrols both inside and outside what was now for all intents and purposes a military compound. He'd found a couple of spots where if the timing was right, the security outside the fence was weak enough that contact could be made with someone inside, but it was to a certain extent going to be about luck.

He returned to the base that his team had set up to relay his intel to Clay. The problem wasn't necessarily going to be making contact with the inside, more likely it would be making contact with someone who gave a damn. What had been clear was that the atmosphere inside Terminal City was strained, although there were leaders and there was a very strict military protocol underway for security, there were also factions within the compound, dissatisfaction with the current situation and some of the stronger and more brutal Transgenics were not happy with sitting back and waiting for their 'ordinary' counterparts to talk. They wanted a war with the government, they wanted their rights to be free and they didn't care who got hurt in the process.

Loyalties were strained and it wasn't going to make it any easier for Clay's team to help, alongside which they did not want to be drawn into anything that they couldn't get out of. They'd been on the run for too long now, barely managing to keep themselves and their families safe and alive. They'd fight for their own, they wouldn't back down in the face of injustice but they weren't about to start jeopardizing what little they had managed to scrounge back for themselves and the last thing they needed was to alert Max or Wade to their whereabouts.

Max paced backwards and forward, trying to work out what to do next. What she really wanted to do was vent some of her frustrations about Alec's typically lax attitude to any kind of disciplined existence. She sometimes wondered how he was never terminated by Manticore or how they never took it into their heads to re-indoctrinate him in such a way that he paid attention to deadlines, meetings and responsibilities. She had, however, learnt the hard way that too many of the Transgenics would accept his leadership over hers. Some of the X5 unit leaders were barely willing to toe the line when she and Alec worked together; without him, she knew they'd take no notice of her at all.

All the talk of freedom from Manticore, of rights and justice and equality and the reality was she couldn't deliver. No one could deliver it or not just like that anyway. There were times she didn't think it would ever be possible as the hordes screamed abuse outside the confines of the Terminal City compound.

Joshua shuffled into the room, looking anxious. He crossed to Max and said, "Alec not there."

"No, he's not here. He's late again!" she said, irritation clear.

"No, Max, Alec not there!" He waved at the door. "Not at home, not been there since he went on mission yesterday."

She spun round, taking in the implications of what Joshua was saying. "Alec's not at home?"

"Not since went on run yesterday to see Lieutenant Clemente."

Max turned away, truly worried now as the implications of Joshua's words began to hit home. She took a couple of deep breaths, trying to calm herself, think rationally. She had to be fair to Alec, there was no way he wouldn't have reported back after his meeting. For all his faults, she couldn't deny that he wasn't anywhere near that irresponsible.

"Luke," she began, crossing over to the computer banks, waiting until she had his full attention before continuing. "Did Alec check back in after meeting with Clemente yesterday?"

"Not with me . . . Hang on . . . " He turned away and tapped away at the keyboard. "There was a call from him to say the meeting was over, it had gone more or less as expected, he'd give more details when he got here, but that he wanted to check a couple of things out, so he wouldn't make his way back until he had stopped in to see Logan first."

Max closed her eyes. It was something else that she needed to admit: things had been strained between herself and Logan and while they hadn't severed ties completely, she'd been leaving Alec to act as go-between as much as she could. Alec had done it for her as well, with little complaint. She was left with little choice now but to contact Logan to see if he had heard anything from him.

"Luke, can you get me a connection to Logan? I need to find out if Alec made it there; maybe he's still there . . ." She doubted that would be the case, but she had to start somewhere. She owed Alec that much at least. It was time she started to acknowledge that he was changing; he was trying to do the right thing.

Luke wasn't able to get an answer from Logan and so leaving him to keep trying, Max wandered away back across the room to where she'd been working before, trying to bring her focus back on to the task of trying to organize the acquisition of supplies, and their distribution when they got them. It was hard to concentrate, her thoughts roaming continuously to the missing Alec and the fact that Logan wasn't answering his phone. Had something happened to both of them? It gave her thoughts a new direction to run as she tried to work out whom, if anyone, she could send to try and contact Logan.

It took three tries of calling her name before Luke managed to get her attention. "Logan's on the line," he said when she finally made eye contact.

She crossed back to the computer systems, grateful when Luke stepped away to give her a little privacy for the conversation. "Logan," she began, pausing to take in his expression and try to judge what he was thinking. "Logan, Alec had a meeting yesterday with Clemente. He checked in afterwards and said he was going to head to see you about something. I was just wondering if he was still with you."

"He's not here," Logan's voice was curt. "This is Alec we're talking about. Are you sure he hasn't just . . . I dunno, headed out somewhere on a whim? It's not like he's that reliable. I still don't know why you've made him your second."

Max resisted the urge to sigh. It was an old argument, tired and meaningless. She'd fed Logan's image of Alec and he'd fed it right on back to her, allowing them both to ignore how much Alec had changed. There were no real excuses, beyond jealousy and ignorance. He made an easy scapegoat.

"Did he come to see you?" she asked quietly. "I need to try and track him down."

"No. He contacted me to say he was on his way after seeing Clemente and he never turned up. I guess he found something more interesting to do. Maybe now –"

Max cut him off before he could say anything more. "No. Alec – Alec was doing his job; something's happened. I don't know what he needed to see you about, but he wouldn't have called you and then just not bothered coming. Not now. It's too dangerous and Alec knows that."

"What do you want me to do about it, Max?" Logan sounded impatient.

"Just . . . just keep your eyes open for anything that might be relevant and let us know please. If you hear anything. I think he might be in trouble. This isn't like him, not with things as they are here."

Logan shrugged. "I'll see if there's anything on the grapevine, but I think you could be wasting your time and he'll turn back up when he's ready." Logan severed the connection, but not before Max saw the disgusted look on his face. She knew it was her own fault. She'd done more than just disparage Alec; she'd used him when it was convenient, told Logan that she was seeing him when she was doing no such thing.

She knew she needed information but she had no real idea how to get it.

Luke wasn't sure who it was who kept trying to hack into their system, but they were good and almost as fast as he created obstacles, they were breaking through them. He knew he needed to call in reinforcements, anything to try and build more fail safes and false leads to delay the team that was trying to break through before they found out more than anyone wanted them to know.

He knew he was tiring and he only had the day shift, this hadn't let up in two days, but it just begged the question of what kind of team of hackers were on the outside trying to break their system? How many of them were there that they didn't seem to slow? The attack was seamless, morphing from one crack to another, adapting and shifting as he layered in the new programming as fast as he could.

Cougar was pacing round and round the safe house, desperate to take action, and Pooch was watching him anxiously. They needed some rationality, some sense of order, and they weren't getting any. Clay had gone off somewhere with Aisha, leaving them with orders to keep watch, and Jensen with orders to get in touch with Alec via the Terminal City system and to hack in if nothing else worked.

Jensen hadn't surfaced from his computers in over forty eight hours for anything more than increasingly rare bathroom breaks and even before that he'd only snatched an hour or two's sleep at a time. What had seemed like a straightforward enough order had turned into anything but. From what Cougar had managed to get out of Jensen, as fast as he hacked, someone on the inside was throwing up defensive maneuvers and diversions. He didn't seem to be able to get a message through their safeguards to try and contact someone with authority to get him in touch with Alec. At each turn, his attempts at communication had been rebuffed, hence the hacking attempts. Jensen was exhausted, but equally convinced that he was just on the verge of cracking the defences.

Cougar and Pooch had both tried pulling rank, something that occasionally worked with Jensen, but this time he had just ignored them, pointing out firstly that he was following Clay's orders, which they all knew had not been intended to put him in this situation, and secondly that they weren't in the Army anymore and therefore rank meant nothing.

Cougar had tried going in and pulling the plug literally, knowing that at some point Jensen's laptop would run out of power and maybe then he would be able to make Jensen take a break for some proper food and even more importantly some sleep. He hadn't gotten the chance, as he'd approached the socket, Jensen had drawn a gun on him and threatened to shoot him if he touched it.

He liked to think that Jensen wouldn't have shot him, but Pooch had dragged him out of the way, saying he'd seen something in Jensen's eyes, he'd never seen before. They were at a loss as to how to proceed. Clay still wasn't answering and Jensen was going to keep hacking until he collapsed from exhaustion.

Moments later, Pooch had an idea. With a growl of frustration that it hadn't occurred to him earlier, he stalked through the house to the cupboard with the fuse box in it, reaching to flip off the fuse that gave electricity to the circuit of sockets in the house, but leave on the light circuit in the hope that Jensen wouldn't notice until it was too late.

There was a sudden cry from the other room that had him and Cougar both dashing for the door to the bedroom. As they opened the door, there was the sound of a very relieved, "Yes! Thank God for that!" Jensen looked up at them, eyes bloodshot and bags below his eyes stark against his drawn features and paler than usual skin.

"I'm through and I've planted so many messages for 494, I mean Alec, to contact me or us with enough clues as to who we are and why. I guess now we just have to wait." The words were barely intelligible, heavily slurred by exhaustion. He started to stand up as he lifted his laptop away from his knees, only to stagger and almost fall. Cougar was close enough that he could catch him, while Pooch snatched at the laptop, taking it away and putting it on the table on the other side of the room. Cougar dragged Jensen back to his bed, laying him down as gently as he could before pulling his shoes off and drawing a blanket up and over him as Pooch flipped the main light off.

"Coug'r, I should . . . I should –" Jensen tried to sit back up again, only for Cougar to hold him down with a hand on his chest and to hush him softly.

"But – " Cougar frowned and Jensen stopped struggling. "Kinda tired, Coug . . ." Cougar just shook his head, raised an eyebrow and left his hand on Jensen's chest, until the tech finally subsided into sleep. Pooch shook his head from his position at the door.

"Do we take bets on how long he's out?" Pooch said softly. Cougar stood up with a shrug, pulling a chair over to sit down and keep watch. "Guess I'll leave you to it." Pooch closed the door behind him.

Luke walked back in the following morning surprised at the excited buzz. There were more people than he expected to see. "What's going on?" he demanded.

"The hackers broke through the system. We lost the battle."

Luke growled in irritation, "And no one thought to let me know. What were you playing at anyway? What's the damage? Which files did they get into?"

He wasn't really prepared for the answer of 'Nothing' and found himself sitting down suddenly, trying to make sense of the information. He poked and teased, but no one came up with anything that made sense, nothing that worked in the situation. He sighed and left people to relax and sort out their part in what had happened. He hustled people from the room so that he could have something more approaching quiet for the work he needed to do in terms of checking the integrity of the information of any files that had been hacked.

The reality seemed to be that whoever had hacked the system had not in fact tried to get into anything that they would deem classified. Luke picked apart everything and then he found it, a new file, placed fair and square and obvious when you were actually looking at it, so obvious in fact that it was easy to miss. The file was in the general access area and was labelled "For Alec, X5-494". How much more obvious could you get?

Luke pondered what to do with it. He began by isolating it, quarantining it from the rest of the system, and running all the checks he could on it. It still seemed innocuous enough, a basic text file and nothing more. Luke ran another set of checks and still nothing showed up. In the end, he was out of options for proving it was malicious and the only thing left to do was send for Alec to open it, and find out what it really was.

Luke went looking for Alec; he hadn't seen him since Max was looking the other day. It was unusual. Alec often spent hours keeping him company, asking him whether various things were possible, giving Luke ideas of new things that it would be good to be able to do. He'd shown a little interest in trying to understand a more about the programming side, but with little time to spare to give fully to the undertaking the X5 hadn't been able to learn much.

Luke knew Alec and Max often argued, wondered if that was the norm in democracies or if it was just the lack of understanding. Max was idealistic for someone who'd lived in this world for most of her life. She didn't really understand the pitfalls of dealing with so many different types of transgenic. It wasn't like the different groups would have been regularly exposed to each other inside Manticore, and generally when they had , it had been in competitive contexts.

Alec understood all that, he also understood the X5 temperament a whole lot better than Max did. Luke wondered if she realized how much troubleshooting Alec spent his time doing or how aware Alec was of the need to come up with a viable medical plan; too many Transgenics needed regular monitoring and access to drug cocktails to balance their screwed up genetics. It had been par for the course in Manticore and out here who knew what could go wrong with a less stable environment, at best adequate diet; more frequently it wasn't even that, along with the prolonged exposure to Terminal City. There would be plenty of Transgenics with weakening immune systems and who knew what kind of problems might be lying in wait?

Max was tired of always being at everyone else's beck and call, and it only seemed to be worse since Alec had vanished. That alone spoke volumes about how much he had been doing without complaint. She was inundated with petty problems and beleaguered with X5 ego-trips. Units had reassembled as their members trickled into the dubious safety of Terminal City and old grievances resurfaced. Max had known that Alec dealt with a bit of this; she was beginning to wonder how much he'd dealt with. Terminal City was full of petty factions bickering and jostling for position, and few of them seemed inclined to listen to her.

There was still no word on Alec. He'd been missing now for nearly sixty hours and she had no idea where to even start tracking him down.

She was almost grateful for Luke's interruption for something else to think about, even if it still came back to Alec. She listened as Luke explained the fight with hackers from outside, trying to grasp the intricacies of what he was saying and knowing that it was more Logan's field than anything she had ever had any interest in.

As they got back to the computer center, Luke was inundated with people hurrying to tell him something important. Clearly the hacker had been more devious than he'd realized. Folders marked "For Alex – X5-494" were popping up in more places on the system. They weren't doing anything, just sitting there waiting, like a ticking time bomb.

"What happens if you open one?" Max asked. "I mean I know they look like they're for Alec, but maybe it's not 'for' him but something we have to do in order to get him back?"

"Get him back?" Luke queried.

She sighed; the cat was out of the bag now. "We haven't seen or heard from him since the contact after his meeting with Clemente saying he was going to see Logan, and he never made it there."

Luke looked shocked. He kept his voice low as he said, "We should keep that quiet around here, but we need him back. There's a lot of stuff that he's . . . working on to keep things running around here."

"Yeah, I know," she agreed, curious as to what things Luke would be worried about. "Can we open one?"

Luke seemed to ponder the best way to do that before nodding and saying, "Come and find me in about half an hour and I'll figure something out."

Alec came round slowly. He had no idea how long he'd been out this time, no idea how long he'd been in this hellhole even. All he knew was he hurt and he was beyond being able to keep himself ready for a chance to escape. He was beyond cold, his body was shutting down. "I'm sorry, Max," he mumbled, as he slipped into unconsciousness again.

Jensen woke after a straight twelve hours of sleep in which he didn't appear to have moved at all. When he tried to sit up, he felt stiff and uncomfortable, and it took a few minutes of trying to stretch and release muscles before he could even make it to sitting up at the side of the bed. He paused there as his head swam and tried to work out why he felt so bad, what the hell he'd been doing the night before.

The door opened and Cougar stood framed in the entrance, head tilted to one side and smirk firmly in place. Jensen pointedly ignored him, dreading the no doubt detailed recount he would get later from Pooch of exactly what ridiculous things he'd done while drunk the previous day. Jensen pushed himself upright, unable to hide the groan of protest or the sudden light-headedness that had Cougar darting from the doorway to support him.

"Careful," Cougar said softly.

"Huh," Jensen stumbled as Cougar led him steadily out of the room towards the bathroom. "You're not normally this solicitous when I'm hungover. What's the occasion?"

"Idiota," Cougar murmured. "Pooch is making you something to eat. I came to wake you up."

"What's the occasion?" Jensen asked again, while also contemplating the fact that the thought of food was not as repulsive as he normally expected after a binge the night before. "I'm not hungover, am I?"

"No."

"Sooo…." Jensen paused, looking at Cougar. "Seriously, I'm going to have words with Clay about this. They send you, Mr Reticent himself, to fill me in on the missing details. Soooo…. What did I miss?"

"You slept. You missed nothing. You hacked into Terminal City, left messages for X5-494 and then you slept. You needed it."

"I slept . . . I slept and it made me feel like this, like my brain shut down and I can't find the on switch?"

"It took you a long time. You weren't eating properly and you didn't sleep."

"Ooooh! One of those kind of jobs, I get it. I eat and then I'll start functioning like a human again. . . that's okay then."

"That's debatable," Cougar smirked, leaving Jensen at the bathroom door. "Don't shower till after you've eaten. "

"Very funny!"

It had to be said that Jensen did in fact feel about three hundred percent better after Pooch's high fat, high carb, high calorie breakfast, and did not give even a passing consideration to the state of his heart, arteries, or waistline while enjoying it. Memories of the epic hacking session came back to him as he ate, and he resigned himself to another morning spent at his laptop. "No!" said Cougar firmly. "Morning off. Fresh air, supply run, movement."

"Bossy much?" Jensen snarked back.

"Man, he's right, J. You spent like nearly forty-eight hours hacking that system. If you don't just take a bit of time now, you'll be no good to us when we have to actually do something. I mean supposing 494 –"

"Alec! He has a name and it's Alec! Just use his goddamned name!" Jensen yelled, turning away, surprised by his own sudden burst of emotion. He stood back rigid, facing away from his worried team mates, trying to breathe deeply and calm himself down.

Pooch stepped closer, a hand reaching out to rest on Jensen's shoulder, "Hey, J, it's okay, don't sweat it, but you're proving my point, bro. You need a break. We need you to be okay and we don't know when we're going to hear from Alec," he emphasized the name, "or what we're going to need to do then. What we do know is we'll need you." Jensen nodded, still not looking round, but some of the tension easing from his shoulders. "Go with Cougs and get the supplies and just chill for now. We'll check your laptop when you come back." Pooch gave another firm squeeze to Jensen's shoulder before stepping back and sharing a concerned look with Cougar.

Jensen took another moment or two before he turned round, looking much more composed than he had before, although somewhat abashed by the outburst. "I'll, er, I'll just grab a shower and a shave," he looked at Cougar as he spoke. "That okay?" Cougar nodded, stepping aside to let him past.

The look Cougar and Pooch shared behind his back spoke volumes about how well they knew him, how they knew his emotions would run high, when he was walking the thin edge of exhaustion and stress. They also knew how personally he took it when a job relied on him, it wasn't like he was alone in that, but this . . . Alec had been almost like one of them.