Chapter10

"She's in the trailer," Dean said, clearly meaning the Impala. That car had never been an it, not even when John had rolled into the yard the first time with two baby boys tucked into the back seat. The oldest of the two wouldn't even talk to anyone but his little bit of a brother for nearly a year. Not even to his father. Bobby watched as someone else slipped out of the driver's side door of the truck and walked towards them.

Now Rumsfeld was barking his head off. Bobby didn't blame him at all, faced with a Dean double. The dog's hackles rose and the bark deepened into a growling snarl at the double's approach. Then the thing, the kid curled his lip up a bit and snarled right back. It wasn't a human noise. Not the sound of a human trying to imitate a snarl. It was an animal sound. Feral and full of the threat of brutal violence. Rumsfeld backed away, belly down, with a submissive whimper. Bobby felt his jaw drop. That dog didn't even back down before demons.

Dean looked a little startled as well, but the only thing he said was, "Huh." He gave who or whatever it was a contemplative look before reaching out and casually running a hand over the kid's hair and down his neck. He let his hand rest between his shoulders for a moment. The snarl slid off the kid's face, and he was again left looking like a simple, if pale, copy of Dean. If you could call that simple. "Guess you really are a cat."

"You're a jerk, you know that?" was the quick reply. Dean only shrugged.

"Bobby," Dean said, and then sighed and ran a tired hand over his face. Bobby knew then that this was more than just a hunt gone bad. He didn't know where the hell John was, but Bobby was going to be playing stand-in. It wasn't the first time. He was strangely used to the role. The Winchester boys had called his junkyard home for years.

"What the hell is going on, Dean?"

"More than you wanna hear without a couple of stiff drinks. Help me get Sam." Bobby knew better than to argue when it came to anything involving Sam, but last he had checked, Sam was using his ginormus brain to whisk through college classes. He also noticed that the kid turned to follow Dean, prompting the older Winchester to say, "Uh, Alec? Yeah, you're sitting this one out, Mr. Gunshot Wound. You sit tight and make friends with Rumsfeld or something."

The kid, Alec apparently, wrinkled his nose at Dean. Bullet wound would explain the pale. "Dean . . ." Bobby began, but he followed Dean over to the cab of the truck and sure enough, there was Sam. A horrifically thin and abused looking Sam, who looked half asleep and was leaning back into the seat.

"Come on, Sammy." Dean opened the door carefully, in case Sam was leaning on it. He fished around behind the seat and pulled out a small bag, slinging it across his shoulders before helping Sam out of the truck. "Let's get you horizontal on a bed that doesn't suck ass. You feel up to eating or drinking anything?" Bobby thought Sam's green look was more than answer enough. "Right. Let's hear it for IV fluids." Apparently Dean agreed, though Bobby wondered where the hell Dean thought he was going to be getting them.

Bobby watched as Dean eased a mostly limp Sam out of the truck, and moved in to get a shoulder under Sam's other arm. It didn't take him and Dean long to get Sam inside and stretched out on the sofa. He was asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow, and they covered him with a blanket.

Alec had trailed them into the room and took the bag from Dean, pulling things out with one hand. Bobby leaned in the doorway, observing as Alec efficiently laid out a partially empty IV bag, a sealed package of tubing, and a roll of surgical tape. "I looked up all the shit they'd been giving him while you were sleeping," he said. "And I gotta say, dude, I couldn't even find a fourth of it. What I could find was standard shit that you most likely don't want to know about. I've played ball with a lot of it before. He'll sleep it off. For the rest, they must have been friggin' paying the chemists overtime."

"Did you sleep at all?" Dean asked, as he slapped Alec's hand away from Sam. Dean carefully pulled Sam's right hand out from under the blanket and rolled up his sleeve away from his hand. Sam didn't even stir, which was weird for him. Bobby knew the boy was a light sleeper.

"Nope." The tone suggested that Alec didn't want to argue. He hung the bag of fluid from the floor lamp knob at the end of the sofa and after working all the air out of the tubing, got it hooked to the IV port already in Sam's hand with Dean's help. He was pretty damned efficient for only using one hand.

"Then you sleep after we get your arm into a sling and you take another pain pill." Apparently Dean felt like arguing anyway, and he was playing daddy. Bobby quelled his curiosity for the moment. Dean would spill later, or Bobby would withhold beer.

"You know I'm built to be able to go ninety-six hours without sleep," the weird double said, almost smugly.

"Yeah, and I bet that's if you're fighting fit, but you've had a bullet dug out of your collarbone by an amateur and bled out a couple of pints of blood. So it's naptime."

"What the hell hornet's nest have you been stirring up, Dean?" The question popped out before Bobby could stop it, despite his earlier resolve to keep his trap shut for the moment. But he didn't need to be asked to fish an old sling out of the hall closet, or to help Dean get Alec's arm properly supported while he ignored the kid's scowl. Dean steered Alec to the recliner and pushed him into it, then fished in his pocket and pulled out a single pill. He held it out to Alec. Bobby watched as the boy picked it up and actually sniffed it.

"Dude, are you always this suspicious?" Dean made a disgruntled disbelieving face. Alec just cut a look over to Sam. Dean held his hands up in surrender. "Fair enough. It's just another of the same stuff I gave you in the motel room." He returned Alec's steady searching look for a long moment silently, and then nodded as Alec tossed it back dry. "Now get some rest."

"I'm fine." The kid's chin tilted up in a defiant look that Bobby knew well, although he was more used to seeing it from Sam.

"Kid, don't forget, I know that face. And I know tired when I see it. We're safe as churches. Sleep." The tension in Dean's shoulders eased just a little as the kid gave a defeated and annoyed huff.

Bobby raised his eyebrows at Dean. "You done playin' momma bear, boy?"

"Yes?" Dean guessed at the right answer. No one sane wanted Bobby annoyed at them. Even John thought twice about crossing the man. John also seemed to take leave of his senses somewhere between thinking twice and three times.

"Good. Now you get your ass into the kitchen, sit it down, and explain." Bobby put a hand on Dean's shoulder and moved him along. Once he had Dean in a chair, he got the young man a mug of black coffee, and then sat himself back down in the chair he had left when he had first heard the truck pull up. "Now let's start with why you brought a monster into my house, and why you're treating it like one of your own."

"Don't you ever say that about him again." Dean's eyes had narrowed in anger and his coffee mug had been thumped down hard enough to slosh. Well, that was interesting. Whoever or whatever the mimic was, he had gotten under Dean's skin and settled into the blood and bone of him already. He must have been new, because Bobby had seen Dean only four months ago.

"Dean, he snarled at Rumsfeld. And won. That just ain't something a human could do. And come to think of it, I can't think of a supernatural ugly that he'd back down before either." He rested his elbows on the table and leaned towards Dean. "So why don't you tell me what's going on?"

"He's our brother. "

"You sure about that, boy? Because from where I'm sitting, I see a weird-ass shapeshifter. And I think Johnny would be damned surprised to learn that he misplaced his oldest son's twin brother. Drink your coffee. It isn't gonna do you any good sitting there in the mug."

"I'm sure, Bobby. Just as sure as I am about Sam." Dean looked down at his mug, then lifted it and took a swallow. "But you're right. He isn't human. At least, not entirely. He called himself an X5."

"And what the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"It means he's a government science project. This isn't a supernatural mess we're in, Bobby. This is government."

"Jesus Christ on a pogo stick. I think it's about time you started from the beginning. And this time I actually mean it."

Dean grinned then. The sarcastic grin that screamed 'shoot me now'. "Oh, and Dad's missing. And by 'missing', I mean 'took off'. Had I mentioned that yet?"

Bobby got up and got them each a beer. Dean looked like he could use that more than coffee. "The beginning, Dean."

"Dad and I had split up to take two different jobs. He had one lined up in California; I took one in New Hampshire. We were going to meet up again in Arizona. Kind of a midpoint, you know?"

"Some midpoint."

"Guess Dad slept through basic geography. I don't wanna talk about it." Bobby rolled his eyes and waited. "Something was chasing my ass across the country. Finally corners me in Arizona, where Dad noticeably wasn't, and I was expecting something ugly. You know, like a harpy, or some girl's pissed off father. Instead I get the kid and two of his friends. He hit me with a tranquilizer. How fucking unfair is that? Someday I'll get him for it. Anyway, next thing I know, I'm being questioned by some pencil neck."

"What did you do?"

"Nothing!" His hand came up to his chest in a mock defensive manner. That was when Bobby was able to place what was visually wrong with Dean. His pendant was gone, and so were his bracelets and his ring. Bobby couldn't remember a time when Dean had ever been without those little protection charms, aside from the first time they had met. He and Sam had given Dean that pendant. The only way Dean would ever been without that gift from Sam was if someone took it. Dean's hand dropped back to the table quickly, like he had just been reminded of what he was missing.

"What else?"

"They brought in this cutie after I punched the first guy in the face one too many times. And they weren't even asking normal questions. It was all about Sam." He looked down then. "And I answered. Everything she asked, I answered. She fucking Obi-Wanned me and I answered. Sam's hurt because I couldn't fight off some chick's mind whammy."

"Stow it and tell the story." Bobby decided to try to chip away at some of Dean's misplaced guilt later, when he had a handle on the situation.

"I don't know what happened next. I spent a lot of time bored out of my God damned mind in a cement cell." He thought about how Alec had been sent in to kill him and the suicidal drama that had followed, but chose to not say anything. It wasn't that he didn't trust Bobby, because he did. But Alec's trust was still pretty fragile. If he wanted to keep the kid, he knew he would have to tread carefully for a while. "MacGyvered my way out of the cell once. Got tossed back in and cooled my heels until Alec had a change of heart and sprung me."

"He kidnapped you and then just changed his mind about it?"

"Something happened. And what they were doing to Sammy bothered him." Dean shook his head and took a long swallow of his beer. "I don't know. And I think it's going to be a long while before the kid feels like sharing." He looked up and looked Bobby square in the face. "I don't know what happens in that place, but I know fear and pain when I smell it, and it bled from the walls. He wanted to get gone and help me get Sammy out. I wasn't gonna say no. And I sure as hell wasn't gonna leave him there."

Bobby couldn't manage anything but a nod. Not much frightened a boy that grew up fighting the most frightening nightmares the world had to offer, but Bobby could see fear now. This place, wherever or whatever it was, had spooked him. Bobby knew Dean well enough to understand that he wouldn't leave a dying dog in a place like that, much less someone wearing his own face. "Fine. Now you tell me what it is you brought into my home and what wrong with Sam."

Dean nodded and took another pull from his beer bottle. "Alec says he's an X5. Apparently they're government made super soldiers. I've gone a round or two with a couple of them. They're as tough as you would guess a super soldier should be, but they play by the books. All military regulation. At least some of them." Dean turned the bottle endlessly around in his hands. "He said that they were built. Made from stolen clones of the children of military parents. All of our imperfections taken out and replaced with something else. Part of it's cat, I guess. I dunno. We haven't had a lot of time to talk about it."

"Then leave it for now. How does this come around to you and Sam?" Dean looked down at his beer bottle and said nothing. "Dean?"

"They sent him to Stanford to play me and kidnap Sammy." He wouldn't look up. "Armed with information I gave them. I guess he fooled Sam well enough to get him out the door. And then Sam just went with him willingly, to get to me." Bobby knew that had to hurt. They'd both walk into fire for the other. No questions asked. Dean only minded when Sam was the one who got burnt.

"Why? Why all this just to get one kid playing unassuming college student?" That was really where Bobby got stuck. He knew that Sam had a brain like a well-oiled steel trap, but there were other geniuses that would have been easier marks. Hell, they already had Dean, and he was just as smart as his little brother.

"Because he's psychic." It sounded like it hurt Dean to say it. Bobby knew John had been careful to raise his boys without the prejudice against them that a lot of hunters had. Without the prejudice again magic and the like until it was proven evil. But that didn't change how others might see Sam. How he might be the hunted if they weren't careful. Bobby knew John had kept secrets. "But he can't be. I'd have fucking noticed."

Bobby knew an opening when he saw it. "Not necessarily."

"What?" Dean's head had snapped up and he had fixed his attention on Bobby.

"You might not have. Not if it never showed. Or it may have showed in a way you were so used to seeing that you never noticed it. Psychic gifts are tricky, Dean. You know that."

"Yeah, but . . ." He set the beer bottle down. "Those sorts of things usually show up in children and adolescents. Or that's what Dad and Missouri said. Sam is kinda past that, don't you think?"

"Not much past. He only finished growing in the last year or so. And look at him, Dean. His body was throwing everything it had into keeping up. He went from a little on the small plump side to the Jolly Green Genius. It's possible that it's only had a chance to turn its energy to something else recently." He took his hat off and scratched his forehead. "It's also possible that these jackasses are full of shit."

"That's a given. Either way."

XXXXX

Elizabeth Renfro actually jumped when she flipped on the light in her office and found a man sitting comfortably at her desk. He had used one of her coffee mugs to make himself some tea, and was calmly reading a recent issue of The Star, the younger red-headed stepbrother of the National Enquirer, with the end of a stick pen held between his teeth.

The man was simply dressed in a blue cable knit sweater, and his shoulder length gray hair was pulled back into a neat ponytail. How he had been reading in the feeble light from the closed window curtains, she would most likely never know. He looked up and took the pen out of his mouth. "Lizzie." He smiled at her with the quiet way he had.

Her eyebrow arched "I hate it when you call me that."

"I know." He folded the rag magazine and set it to the side. "I see you finally got the boy out."

For the first time, she regretted not having any chairs in her office besides her own. She folded her arms across her chest and leaned back against the wall. "Yes. It wasn't easy. 494 is stubbornly loyal to his unit. It would have helped if you had made him easier to manage."

He let out a bark of laughter. "I had nothing to do with his attitude. Even I'm not good enough to arrange someone's personality." Sandeman sat forward in her chair, interest and curiosity lighting up his face. "Well, how did you manage it?"

"He grew unreasonably attached to an assignment. Again. And I used them as a vehicle to encourage his escape." She pushed off the wall and closed the door to her office firmly before heading over to her desk. "You're in my chair."

"It's a very comfy chair. Who was the assignment? Anyone of interest?"

"Samuel Winchester." A slight, sly smirk spread across her face. "Does the last name ring any bells?" she asked, wondering if he remembered the name from twenty-one years ago on 494's genetic assay.

"You had Sam Winchester here. In this facility." He looked outright startled. Clearly he remembered the name without difficulty. "How on God's green earth did you manage to get him here?"

"We brought in Dean Winchester and had 494 mimic him. The youngest came in easily enough. How do you know them?"

"Never mind that." He waved her question off. "Count yourself lucky that this place is still standing. The Winchesters are a force to be respected and not trifled with." He gave her a very serious look. "However, you couldn't have picked a better way to protect 494 than by returning him to his blood family. Nicely done."

"Thank you." Sandeman was about the only person on earth that could confuse and derail her. He did it frequently enough to make up for the rest of the world's deficiency.

"So let me see the mission reports and the information you gathered." He clapped his hands together once in a sort of academic glee. "If it has to do with any of the Winchesters or 494, have it make it' way here. Files, reports, clothing, toe nail clippings, all of it. I have some catching up to do. And fetch dinner, Lizzie. It's going to be a long evening." This seemed to amuse him immensely. He shooed her away. "And you may want to get yourself another chair."

XXXXX

Dean and Bobby settled back into a sort of strange domestic pattern that they had built up over the years of the boys being left in Bobby's care. It was an odd sort of partnership that Bobby saw clearly, but he wasn't sure Dean would ever see for what it was. Dean took care of Sam, but someone had to take care of Dean.

When Bobby had first made their acquaintance, Dean was likely to take someone's hand off if they got too close to Sammy. Anyone but John, that was. He was startled by the amount of protective instinct and violence that could come out of one adorably sad, mute, five-year-old boy.

Dean took care of his little brother. His entire world revolved around Sam. If little Sammy was the Earth, then Dean was his Moon and John was the sun covering them both. That had been the first of John and Bobby's arguments. Bobby had said it wasn't healthy for Dean to be so focused like that. John didn't give a fuck about healthy. They didn't have time for therapy, and if Dean was focused on Sam, then he would talk to someone, and even smiled on occasion.

Bobby learned then that no one else was allowed to take care of Sammy, but Dean would let people take care of him, if it was couched into the right terms. When he was little, the way to get through his wall of silence was that everything was for Sammy. He could cook for Dean if Dean could watch so he could learn to cook for Sam. Bobby could get him into bed for the night, if he could share Sam's bed. Because then he was there if Sam needed him.

Bobby always suspected that Dean knew Bobby had been playing him all those years ago, but as Dean grew older and out of his silence and even started to sometimes want things for himself, they never brought it up.

The man knew that Dean was about done in when they reverted back to their old pattern from when Dean was only eight and wanted a daddy and John was off on a hunt. Dean sat on the counter quietly while he watched Bobby cook, some of the tension leaving his shoulders as he finally let someone else take care of him.

Bobby was a breakfast man. At any hour of the day. Simple and healthy enough. Sort of. If you ignored the grease, which Bobby did. He rustled around in the fridge and fished out a dozen eggs, bacon, bread for toast, and a couple of pieces of fruit. He juggled everything with expertise gained over years of being too lazy to want to make a second fridge trip, and made his way over to the counter by the stove. He slapped an apple into Dean's hand on his way by to get a bowl to mix eggs in.

"So why's your girl in a trailer?" He watched as Dean took a bite of the apple and started cracking eggs into the bowl.

"She needs some work. And I think her mojo is spent." He looked at the apple, turning it in his hand before saying anything else. "Alec was driving her. Without permission. HHHe said he thought she didn't like him much. She's got a bullet hole in one of her back panels, the back windshield is blown, and one of the windows shattered." He took another bite of the apple. "And her paint is scratched. Also, I think she needs Sam to redo her protections, but he's gotta be awake to do it."

"That window is gonna be a pain in the ass." He slapped a pan full of eggs on the stove, followed by the bacon. Talking mechanics always eased Dean's nerves. Nothing to fight with car parts, and hardly ever someone's life on the line.

"I know. The door is going to have to come apart."

"Yep. Least we have the parts." He jabbed at the eggs with a spatula. "Got an Impala dumped here not so long ago. It's too trashed to even think about saving, but the body is still okay."

Dean nodded and slipped off the counter to throw the apple core away and start the toast. The first thing he had ever taught the boy to make, at John's request. The man could handle a gun the way most men handled their lovers, but anything in the kitchen? It acted like it was possessed when John Winchester breathed too close to it.

So Bobby Singer, long time hunter and information man, demon expert and mechanic, was charged with teaching cooking to a child. And he had thought, before the Winchesters, that the demons were what made his life weird. He flipped the bacon and watched Dean. He remembered when he used to have to lift him up and set him on the counter.

He remembered when they were a bit older, Dean would sit on the counter and read car magazines or hunter compiled bestiaries while Sammy sat at the table learning some new bit of magic, researching a hunt, or simply doing his homework. Sam may have looked like the brains of the family, but Dean always had a quick and accurate answer to any of Sam's questions. Questions Sam would ask without even looking up from his books, because he knew without a doubt that Dean would have an answer for him. Bobby wondered how he always managed to keep one step ahead of his baby brother. Were there ever really that many hours in a day?

After a few more minutes, he and Dean had piled the meal onto a few plates and were carrying it into the living room. Alec was already awake, looking pretty damned alert. Bobby handed him a plate and fork while Dean coaxed Sam back into the waking world.

Bobby settled down on the footrest, because he wasn't going to kick someone with a gunshot wound out of the chair. Alec balanced the plate of his knees and poke at the bacon with his fork. "Just bacon, kid. It's already dead; it won't bite."

"I've never had any before." He picked it up and sniffed it. Actually sniffed it. Then he shrugged and took a small bite. The rest of the piece was quickly shoved into his mouth. He seemed oblivious to the fact that Bobby and Dean were staring at him.

Even Sam had perked up enough to give him a funny look. "You're serious. You've never had bacon?" Trust curiosity to make Sam feel better.

"Uh, no?" Alec shrugged. "They only give us health food." He grinned and it was a lot like Dean's. That made sense, given that he had Dean's face, but somehow Bobby hadn't been expecting it. "But this tastes a hell of a lot better."

"The food was pretty damned boring." Dean spoke around a mouthful of toast. "If I ever see another piece of wheat bread, I think I'll hurl."

"Grudge much?" Sam asked, and then yawned until his jaw popped and rubbed at his face.

"All I got, dude. Friggin' wheat bread sandwiches." He handed Sam a piece of toast with a look that said Sam had better at least try to eat it.

"That's all they gave you?" Alec asked, between bites of egg.

"Uh . . . after I escaped from my cell with a bedspring and a paperback book, they weren't giving me much to work with."

"My brother, MacGyver." Sam actually cracked a tired smile, then wrinkled his nose as he took a miniscule bit of the toast.

"Past the X5 guards?" Alec was looking impressed.

"Yeah. Well, one guard."

"Still. Friggin' X5. We're the best. What did they look like?" Alec was curious now. It sure as hell hadn't been anyone from his unit. Not because he didn't think Dean could take any of them, but just because he was sure they would have told him if they'd been knocked out by someone that looked like him. "Male or female?"

"Uh." Dean was a little taken off guard by Alec's interest. "Guy. Kinda Hispanic looking. Black hair in a short ponytail. Came to about my chin."

"Denny." Alec knew immediately who it was, and that Denny had gotten his ass chewed by Jules.

"So how many of you are there?" Sam asked.

Alec found his mouth sticking closed. That was tactical information, more than personal, and he had been trained to never give that away. Hell, he shouldn't have told them what he already had.

Dean saw the hard, tense line of Alec's jaw and sighed. "Dude, he's just curious. That's the way Sammy is. He's going to be pelting you with questions until you want to gag him."

"Hey!" It was sleepy but indignant.

"Shut up, Sammy. Besides, are you ever going to go back to them?" Dean asked him. It was a reasonable question, and he was willing to wait for an answer. Dean figured that these X5s had been put through a lot of conditioning. It didn't take much when you had someone from the time they were born. Hell, even Sam had been unbreakably conditioned by the way he had been raised. Sam had left the hunt about as far behind as he could, going from rat trap motels in back water podunk towns to friggin' Stanford, and Dean knew for a fact that he still couldn't sleep if the room wasn't salted and sealed and that Sam would never be without a weapon. John had instilled that caution into them, into Sam from before his first birthday, and Dean had made sure it stuck.

Dean was pretty sure that harsher methods than constant repetition and patient lessons to teach a five year old how to handle a weapon had been used with Alec. So he ate a piece of toast and waited for Alec to figure out that he had no home left, that the only direction he could go was forward. That wasn't something you wanted to rush a person into.

Alec stared across the room at a bookshelf filled with things that were so foreign to him that he might as well have been on Mars. He knew he should go back. It was instinct just as deeply ingrained in him as the need to give chase when prey/target ran. Honestly he even wanted to go back. For Lydecker. The only person who had ever been proud of him. Who had given him second chances when he had screwed up so badly he didn't deserve them. Who still thought he could be a good soldier, hell, a good commander, even when his twin, his exact copy, had gone completely crackers. And then there were the other X5s. Those were his unit siblings he was leaving behind. For people he had only known or pretended to be for a month. People who were his siblings by blood as opposed to those he had been raised with. Did the blood relation really mean that much?

No, he decided, it didn't, but Biggs had been right. He was falling apart inside. And it was Biggs who had gotten him moving. Biggs, who got him out. Biggs, who was his first memory, his brother, and his best friend. It wasn't a betrayal. It was self-preservation at the request of someone he trusted and who would watch out for the Unit in his place.

If he was going to be honest, Biggs and CeCe were about the only people he trusted to know how much he could take. He trusted them over himself. When Psy-Ops had been done with him when he was ten, he had barely known his own designation code and had no urge to do anything. Even if he had wanted to, he wouldn't have even known how, they had stripped him so bare. Eventually, something had started to show through. And there had been Biggs and CeCe waiting. Like they had known the entire time that he would make it back.

But now he had moved out from under their protection. And out from under the Colonel's, too. Biggs had given him the push to start him moving, but he had run with it. He was out of chances. He didn't think that the colonel would protect him this time.

But the Winchesters, if nothing else, were offering freedom. He thought that maybe his independent streak, which had caused so much trouble for him, wouldn't be such a problem. They were certainly weird enough. Hell, maybe docility wasn't supposed to be the norm.

Or maybe Sam and Dean, his brothers, at least by blood, which was just as valid as by unit he guessed, were anything but docile. Dean was aggressive. Not hostile, just aggressive. He was one of those people that you couldn't help but take notice of. Clearly, Alec's ability to disappear in plain sight was a learned skill, or maybe a product of his tampered genes.

He looked over at Sam, who was slouched down into the sofa, sleeping again or resting or whatever the hell he was doing while Alec tried to decide if he would answer, his long legs folded up. Alec realized he actually knew very little about Sam. He knew he was an excellent actor, given the way he led Alec on those first two day. He knew Sam had a mind like a steel trap and an iron will to walk headfirst into a kidnapping just to gain the remote chance of helping his brother. He supposed he could add fiercely loyal to the list.

All the introspection and analysis was making him want to bang his head into a wall. Alec had always been a Bottom Line, Up Front type of person. The bottom line here was that Dean was right. He couldn't and wouldn't be going back to base, going back home. But that also didn't mean he would turn on his unit sibs.

"That's tactical information."

"Not really, dude." Dean paused. "Well okay, maybe it is, but that's not why Sammy asked. We're not going back there. My main mission right now is to keep Sammy as far away from them as possible. He's just trying to find out about you. He's one of though people that always reads the 'human interest' stories in the newspapers. Aren't you Sammy?"

Sam didn't even bother to open his eyes; he just lifted a hand in a one fingered salute. At least he was paying attention.

Alec considered it. Then took a deep breath. "There's about eighty-seven of us X5s total. I think."

"You only think?" Dean asked.

"Eighty-seven's not really an 'about' number," Sam said, without opening his eyes. Alec noticed that he did a lot without opening his eyes. He wondered why.

"Four units of twenty-five. At least that's what we were in the beginning. Alpha lost two that I'm sure of. And fourteen ran for the wire; one was killed on the way out." Alec's voice went hard, remembering the punishment that had come down on the twins left behind, himself being one of them. "So I don't know if they're alive, but they're X5s so we'll assume yes. My unit's lost four, five if you include me. Charlie's lost three, and Delta lost two, which drops us down to eighty-seven. But some are out on missions, so who knows about them. Thus 'about'."

Dean wanted to ask why Alec's unit had lost more, but instinct told him that now just wasn't the time.

XXXXX

He sat sideways on the sofa, his eyes skipping over the sea of clutter to watch a girl sitting in front of a monstrous sprawling beast of a computer. She was cute, totally cute, but that wasn't what had his attention. It was what she was rattling off. "Not like I ever expected to tell you anything about yourself, geez. Give a freak a break, man." Sam watched as she shook her head and looked up at the ceiling as she rattled off Alec's information quickly. "331845739494 aka X5-494 aka Raz aka Simon Lehane, limited success in reconditioning after we jumped, reconditioned again after the Berrisford incident, flight risk, high risk for aberrant, overseas deployment, CO . . . et cetera, et cetera. You lived it. Oh, and your file had a DNT memo attached."

But his attention was no longer on the speaking girl. He was now staring at Alec with concern as his new brother seemed to fall apart. Right in front of his eyes. This didn't seem right at all. Sam knew he shouldn't be there, at least not right now. Alec's hand went up to his head and he hunched in on himself like he just been kicked in the head, or just that something blindingly painful was trying to make itself know. "I didn't have a name," Alec said, but it was more like a moan or a plea.

He whipped around to look at the pretty girl, hoping desperately that she had an answer, but she was looking at Alec in utter confusion. "Hey. You okay?" she asked Alec, but he wasn't paying the least bit of attention. Sam wondered if this was what a vision looked like from the outside, because they had lost Alec to something they couldn't see.

Sam crouched down next to Dean and his newest brother. Dean was holding Alec up. He opened his mouth to call him by name, but it wasn't right and it stuck in his throat. And then it was gone. Nothing left but pain.

"Dean!" Alec's voice was sharp, urgent and Dean bolted, Bobby tight on his heel. He got there just in time to see Sam curl up like he's been jabbed in the belly. Or like something blindingly painful was trying to crawl out of his head.

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