Disclaimer: Borrowed

A/N: Graphic violence. Don't read it if you're easily offended. I'm moving this story up to M where it will stay.

F is for Failure

Special Agent Ames White liked to think that he was a man who learned from his mistakes. For years he had played the role of the egotistical villain whose captives managed to slip from his grasp, evading death time and time again. It was embarrassing.

He had learned from past experiences that if he dawdled with 452 or 494, they would eventually manage to pull of a grandiose escape of one kind or another and he was sick of playing games. He'd spent a year feeding false information to Eyes Only and Lydecker, both of whom he knew were working with his father; he made sure that 494 away on a mission when he raided the house the animal kept with its mate.

The deaths of X5-452 and X5-494 were a long time coming. He'd worked hard, planned more carefully than he ever had before. His success would secure him a place in the good graces of the Conclave and when he completed his task, they would help him find his son.

He only brought one other Familiar for backup, knowing that stealth was the only way he would manage to achieve his goal and make it out cleanly; the Familiars would eradicate the rest of the Transgenic filth another day. For now, his only goal was to deliver two very painful deaths and, if all went according to plan, a third by association.

He would not fail again.

************************

A little boy with dark hair and clear hazel eyes looked up guiltily from the kitchen floor where he clutched a chocolate chip cookie in his chubby hand; it would be the last cookie Ben ever snuck while his mother slept.

As the confusion faded from the boy's eyes, fear crept in and the child began to cry. Acting quickly, White grabbed the three-year-old by his collar and tried to muffle the little boy's sobs. As the sobs turned into terrified shrieks, however, Ben's parentage began to show through; as the product of two X5s, the kid had a set of lungs on him.

"Ben?" White heard a tired voice calling out from the other room.

452.

It took her a moment to make her way into the kitchen and as she rounded the corner, White could see why. Her eyes were tired and her stomach was huge. He hadn't known that she was pregnant; it made her slow, dulled her senses, made everything even easier.

"Ben," she choked out, brown eyes widening in horror.

"It's been a long time, 452. I see you've been breeding."

"Let him go, Ames. He's a baby. He's doesn't have anything to do with this."

"Actually, 452, I prefer to think of it as a bonus. I didn't realize that I'd have the pleasure of putting down three filthy animals tonight." He motioned to her swollen stomach with his gun, smirked and knowing better than to hesitate, Ames White pulled the trigger. The bitch let out a strangled cry and fell to her knees, clutching her bleeding belly with one hand and reaching out for her son with the other.

"He's doing you a favor, 452. The world is better off without 494's spawn running wild." White's companion sneered, gun steadily aimed at the bleeding transgenic. Passing his gun to his companion, White pulled out a long, serrated hunting knife and held it to the crying child's throat. Struggling to her feet, Max growled and lunged at White, eyes feral. Maybe, just maybe, if she had been at full strength and in any condition to fight, he could have reached him fast enough. She wasn't though, and she couldn't.

Even as White slid the blade across her son's throat, the second Familiar shot her in the knee and she crumpled again, unable to stand.

**********************

Thirty miles away, Alec knew that something was wrong; his instincts were going screaming and though he didn't want to admit it, he could feel it weighing on his heart.

"Max."

Suddenly, the mission was no longer important. He hauled himself up the rope, reaching the skylight nearly as quickly as he'd descended in the first place and practically throwing himself off the roof in his rush to get back to the waiting Hummer.

Yanking open the driver's side door, Alec shoved Lydecker over and leapt in. Mission aborted, they were tearing down the road towards Seattle within moments.

"It was supposed to be easy, 494, in and out; how the hell did you manage to screw this one up?" Lydecker snapped at the X5. What he didn't expect, however, was the vicious snarl he got in response. The hazel eyes that met his glare did not belong to the cocky transgenic that he was familiar with; they were cold, primal, inhuman and suddenly Lydecker was worried.

"What's going on, son?"

"Give me your phone," the X5 demanded. Lydecker handed it over without question. Alec had never dialed so quickly in his life.

"Yeah?" Mole answered on the second ring. Noticing Alec's white knuckles, Lydecker sent up a silent prayer that the little plastic phone wouldn't snap in half; it was the only one they had in the Hummer.

"Get to my place now," he barked into the phone. "Something's wrong. I can feel it. Find Max and Ben. My ETA is eighteen minutes."

Alec could hear a shotgun being cocked.

"On my way."

He snapped the phone shut and stomped down even harder on the gas. Clutching the armrest, Lydecker wisely chose to keep his mouth shut; transgenics, especially alphas, were viciously protective of their mates.

********************

White hadn't counted on being intercepted on his way out. The giant, shotgun toting lizard and the dog from the JamPony incident charged right through the front door as he stood at the sink, washing the blood of 452's spawn from his hands. His companion who had made the mistake of setting his gun down to dry his hands was dead within seconds, a shotgun shell through the forehead.

A quick glance around confirmed for the two transhumans what the scent of blood in the air had threatened, death. With an earsplitting roar, the giant dog rushed forward. Ames White put up a fight, but within moments, Mole was holding Joshua back, tell him to wait, that White wasn't his to kill anymore.

"I would rip your throat out right now, but Alec is on his way. He's going to be the one who ends you," the lizard spat in White's face as he restrained the bleeding Familiar. Not wanting White to see Alec's reaction to the carnage, Mole forced the image out of his mind and hauled the prisoner out the back door and away from the house.

Howling in anguish, Joshua stood out front to wait for Alec. By the time the X5 pulled up and threw himself out of the Hummer seven minutes later, the tears running down Joshua's face were so thick that he could barely see. Alec didn't even glance at his friend as he blurred past.

********************

The silence that enveloped the house, his home, was wrong; quiet had become a thing of the past the moment it became clear that Ben had inherited his father's penchant for chatter and knack for finding trouble. Even as he blurred towards his front door, the silence told Alec that his life as he knew it was over.

The air was permeated with the scent of blood; it flooded his mind, overwhelming his senses. And then he saw them. The only thought runing through his mind as he dropped to the floor was fail, fail, fail; he'd failed to protect them, his family, the most important thing in his life.

Sprawled out on the kitchen floor, his mate, his little boy and the daughter he had been three weeks away from holding for the first time. Ben's throat was slit ear to ear and there was still chocolate on his face from the cookies he always managed to steal. Max had been shot in the belly, kneecap neck and then head and Alec knew deep down that she had been forced to watch Ben die first. The noise that erupted from his throat was beyond human, beyond feral, beyond anything that anyone had heard before.

*****************

By the time 494 made it out back to meet Mole, the transhuman had already taken the liberty of removing White's tongue. He hoped that Alec would simply regard it as an act of rage, but in reality, he hadn't wanted his friend to have to hear the taunting that would surely accompany White's demise.

Lydecker was standing back a few feet, face a mask, but eyes giving away just how much he had cared for Max. Though the X5s had always intrigued him, he wasn't quite sure if he wanted to find out how far 494 was willing to go as he destroyed Ames White.

Mole stepped back, clearing the path between Alec... no... those cold eyes belonged to X5-494, and the Familiar he'd tied to a giant oak tree.

The razor-edged knife that 494 always kept on his person was the chosen device. It only lasted fifteen minutes, but the X5 quickly displayed his knowledge of the human anatomy, slicing, stabbing, gouging and hacking everywhere that wasn't quite fatal. If Familiars couldn't feel pain, it wasn't showing. It could have been the lack of a tongue, or the lack of his left eye or the loss of his balls, but somewhere along the line, it became apparent that Ames White could still hurt. In the end, though, 494 reached over and took the pistol from his jacket and finished ending White's life.

Lydecker had enough experience with mated Transgenics in his lifetime to anticipate 494's reaction. He counted the bullets as they riddled White's body. Knee, Knee, Groin, Belly, Head. One, two, three, four, five and because he knew that the young man would save the last bullet for himself, he clubbed Alec with the butt of his gun. Mole caught the alpha as he crumpled and gave Lydecker a curt nod before throwing the unconscious X5 over his shoulder and heading for the infirmary.

*****************

"We can't keep him sedated forever."

"You know just as well as I do that he's gonna eat his gun the second he wakes up."

"Maybe it's time to let him." Dix whispered sadly.

"As a soldier, 494's greatest downfall was his tendency to love." Lydecker muttered gruffly. A second later, he was off his feet, held up against the wall by an inhumanly powerful hand at his throat.

"His name is Alec." 511 growled, squeezing the older man's throat in warning before dropping him to the floor.

*****************

Alec woke up at 0300 hours with Biggs at his bedside, watching over him with sad eyes.

"Hey," he said, knowing that Alec wouldn't respond. "I've been sitting here for two days thinking about things..."

Alec's face was blank, emotionless, but Biggs continued.

"You've been a great soldier, a great leader, a great friend and father, always the best. You stood with us through the siege, helped us legitimize ourselves out in the real world and you've always been good for a laugh. We want to keep you, Alec, but we're not going to put you in a cage. We love you, but you have our permission to go."

As he spoke, Biggs watched his friends hazel eyes, searching for a spark of life, anything that would give them hope; he found nothing. With Max, Ben and the baby gone, it was inevitable; Alec wasn't planning on sticking around. Taking a deep breath, Biggs stood and saluted his lifelong friend, his CO.

"It's been an honor, sir."

Then he walked out of the hospital room, leaving the ruined X5 to dress alone. Five minutes later, the room was empty.

******************

They found him that evening between the two headstones. Max and the baby girl whose name would have been Eva were on his left, Ben on his right. He'd set flowers on both graves before he'd stuck his treasured Glock in his mouth and ended it.

The next day, they buried him with his family, right where he wanted to be, right where he needed to be. And even though it was never quite rowdy, never quite as fun without Alec around, they all knew that wherever he was, he was happier.

A/N: Review?