A/N: Thanks for all the reviews, it meant a lot. I choose to withdraw my application to FIT just because I knew I didn't want to go into fashion. It was a hard choice, but you know, life sucks at times, so fanfiction had been my escape. Sometimes I wish more horrible things would happen to me because I end up writing some excellent chapters. Hope you like it. :D

Fourteen - The General's Daughter

Max came back for her things in her locker, mostly the bottle of tryptophan she desperately needed that morning. She was too proud to admit her seizures to Logan. She wanted to tell him, but instead stuck the majority of it in the bathroom. Though, she knew later on she would have to get her extra stash in her locker.

As she walked down the dim hallway she took a look behind her shoulder before returning back to her path.

Max found her locker and unlocked the combination. She squeezed the top edge out before she forced the stuck iron door open. The rusty hinges creaked loudly as she lifted her textbooks up and found the bottle of pills at the bottom of her locker. The shakes rattled her but she opened the bottle and downed two pills before she tried to control her body again. It would be the beginning of another bad patch. She always thought when she would go weeks or a month without one, she perhaps miraculously she grew out of them.

Things never got better, they always got worse.

Closing the locker, she saw a figure emerging from the dark. The area was somewhat lit and if it had been completely dark her night vision would identify the figure, instead, it remained faceless.

The feeling something was wrong couldn't be shook that easily for a reason.

It waited. It sought it's pray out and did it successfully.

She was beautiful. Everything it was supposed to be but was denied. It might not be as smart as it's prey, but it was quicker and stronger, and it knew it. It took a lot of strength and quickness to find it's way to each of its prey. The cycle was almost complete and it knew she only had days before it was found.

It had to happen now.

But, she wasn't the one.

"Guevara!"

Max swallowed in relief when the General came from the shadows. She automatically pocketed the pills before slamming her locker close. She shouldn't have been so paranoid. Call her an agoraphobic, but, there was a part of her that wanted to run back to Logan's apartment and never leave. She was always afraid of coming home and discovering another slaughtered body.

If Logan died, she didn't know what she would do.

"General." Max spoke when she turned around. "I was just picking up some of my things."

The General looked rather disappointed when he heard. "Are you planning on not coming back?"

Max shifted uncomfortably, unsure at the present time if she would ever come back. "For right now." Max itched the back of her hair as she stood to face him.

The General sighed. "I wish you could reconsider. I know things are difficult, I understand, but it would be best if you came back to school. At least try."

Max licked her lips and then pressed them together. There was part of her that wanted to go back to school, not just for the General, but for Logan too. She wanted him to be proud, but she still couldn't think about going back to school. It was rubbing down to her bone that she had no exact reason to stay except for Logan. She really wanted a reason for herself and not for anyone else.

"I'll come back when I'm ready."

The General narrowed his eyes. "What have you been doing lately?" He asked curiously.

"I haven't been doing much." Max replied honestly. Her eyes darkened as she tore her eyes from his and began to think about Theo and Jacinda. "I keep replaying that night over and over again. I keep thinking I've missed something, a clue or a shred of evidence." Max stopped herself, looking at the General with embarrassment.

His heart broke and tried not to show it, but Max grew up around those types. She could see the slight change of his eyes, the nervous tick, and the tense muscles. "It isn't your fault." The General said.

Max would have told him different, that if she had been there she could have stopped it. He wouldn't understand, no matter how hard if she tried to explain it. She was close to, close enough to tell him all the reasons she had been troubled.

"I have to go." Max avoided his eyes and found the door at the end of the hall.

Escape.

"Come to my office for a second, there's…something I have to show you."

Max swallowed harshly before nodding in agreement. The General opened his door and she entered the familiar office. It had pictures of his time in service, pictures of troops that he lead, and a wall of pictures of recent graduates. Max felt awkward as the relics of a past life haunted her as well as him. They almost meant nothing to him anymore. The pictures were to stir some pride in his past, but the office remained lifeless except the wall full of pictures of his favorite students.

Max stood by the portrait of him in uniform, decorated with his awards and metals. "What made you leave top rank?" Max quipped, pushing her hands in her leather jacket.

The General shifted uncomfortably, looking away into the distance. "What are the rumors?"

Max narrowed her eyes humorously. "Well, there are quite a few, but no answers."

"I use to run Fort Knox before the Japanese bought the bouillon and used the base as their own financial bank. My work was everything to me, my troops, my men…"

Max raised her eyebrow. "No women?"

The General smiled, his face lightening a bit at her sarcasm. "There was one girl."

Max smiled, nodding. "Ah, I see."

He laughed, shaking his head. "No, Max, it wasn't like that." Max turned around from the picture, facing the General with a questioning eye. "She was my daughter."

"You're daughter was in your unit…"

Again, the General shook his head. "No, she lived on the base with me. Her mother…my wife died in a car accident. She went…out of control. I couldn't see that it was a cry for help. I couldn't see that all she wanted was for me to care more about her than my position."

"I kicked her out. I shouldn't have done so, but…the third arrest was more than reason to. She left, stubborn and angry. She would do anything to get me back for what I did to her. I blame myself everyday for not paying attention, for not loving her for who she was and not who I wanted her to be."

Max listened, watching as he recalled memories he often hid away. Curiosity got to her and she couldn't help but listen attentively, trying to piece together his past. Max took another deep breath, trying to figure out why exactly he was discussing this with her. The story seemed like another awful story and she was going to roll her eyes if he said that he was reminded her by Max.

"She went missing and I searched everywhere for her. It wasn't until she was gone that I realized that what a mistake I made, how I should have taken care of her, and how I should have paid attention." The General began to regret with great pain. He ran his hand over his aging white skin and shook his head from the mistakes he made. "She called me nearly a year later, saying she was in trouble and she needed my help. She was pregnant…"

Max felt tingling at her fingertips. Her eyes darkened, looking at him with sympathy. She knew the story wasn't going to end happily. She doubted if Jacinda and Theo weren't dead that he would be opening to her. She was put in an awful position; she would have to stay and listen, maybe even witness him cry, god forbid. But there was something wrong…something different that she couldn't place, like before.

"She had lived on streets. She was starving and too stubborn to call home. She found someone that was willing to pay her enough money, a warm place to live, three square meals a day, only if she would give her unborn child to them…she agreed."

Max blinked as the story hit a little too close to home. She could feel the blood running from her face as it paled.

"She wanted out. She changed her mind and wanted the baby. But by the time I could help her it was too late. When the baby came to term they induced and they got rid of her. I found her, years later. She wasn't the same, Max. No one could be the same after that. She told me about the baby. That…" The General licked his lips as his voice became more desperate. "The baby was special. I promised her I would find her daughter for her. I promised. She's been dead for nearly ten years but I kept that promise Max."

Max pressed her lips together as her eyes looked up. Her heart raced so fast that she began to feel slightly faint. She couldn't imagine being anymore scared than she was there. Her first memories flashed before her eyes, but she always was searching for an earlier memory. A memory where she saw her mother. It never existed.

"She told me about the barcodes."

Max shook her head. "I don't know what you're talking about."

Max turned to the door and slammed it open. It felt like her chest was crushing her more and more. Everything began to spin around her and the only thing that stopped her from letting her knees give in was the escape in front of her. She was so close, she could open those doors and run from the reality and into the world she made for herself.

"Max, I know that baby was you. I've been searching for you for almost everyday of your life. I lost everything but I knew I would gain so much more if I found you."

Max gasped for air as the door seemed farther and farther away. "I recruited men that transferred from any Wyoming base. I found out that these children that were taken from their mothers were genetically engineered to be a better soldier than any human could be. Then I found out that they escaped in '09. A select few. These few suffered from a rare form of epilepsy. The pills in your locker…"

Max didn't stop walking when she approached the door. She was tired of people knowing about her and never speaking a word of who she really was. It even scared her. If they knew so much, why hadn't Lydecker found her already?

"I searched for girls at a certain age through social service databases, hoping to get something off of you. Everything was lost from the pulse, but three years ago a Jacinda Guevara petitioned for state aid for a girl they took in, a girl with epilepsy."

Max shook her head and instead of denying it like she should have, she only questioned him. "There were twelve other girls in my unit, twenty four in all. It could be any of them!"

"My daughter was the last of the X5 unit. You're the same age that her daughter would have been."

Max just kept walking. "Yes, and what about the other units?"

"My daughter was given a number for clarification. Surrogate #12-452."

Max nearly stopped as her stomach swirled. Unit 12, Soldier 452. People might know who she was but no one knew her designation. It was something highly personal, only something her siblings and TAC leaders knew. She couldn't even think about telling Logan her number. It stood for everything she loved and hated, it was everything she was and everything she didn't want to be.

"That's your number isn't it?"

The tears ran freely, unable to hide it anymore. The General took the silence as an answer. He stopped her by holding onto her shoulders and stepping in front of her. He witnessed her crushed face but she was smart enough to whip the tears away. She wouldn't cry, not anymore.

"I never wanted to find her. I made her into this monster only to protect myself." She looked up, apologetic that she would ever think of his daughter—her surrogate mother that way. "Because I didn't want to be hurt when I found out the worst, that perhaps…she didn't love me."

The General held onto her shoulders tightly before wrapping his arms around her. "She loved you. She loved you every single day until her death. I promised her I would find you and tell you how much she loved you."

Max didn't know what to do in the embrace by someone who she thought of as a distant pain. He had always known that she was his daughter's baby and always looked over her. He was always concern about her, sending her parents notes home and always knowing what she got on her tests. She should have known his concern was unusual, but she didn't know anything about parental concern. She didn't know that she could ever met some of her real human family.

As Max held onto him tightly, she felt a cold hand grab her around her neck. She took a deep breath when she was torn from the General. She saw the look of horror on his face when the arm quickly wrapped around her neck. Max couldn't breath and even when she tried to struggle, the strength of the person behind her was too strong.

"Max…"

The General ran to protect her but it was only a few seconds before Max blacked out.

One thing she could think of before she drifted into darkness was just when she found everything, it was already lost.

A/N2: I didn't plan on the General having any connection to Max or Manticore, I just wanted there to be a contrast to the military training she had as a child and the fact that she could never truly escape it. But, I knew I sort of couldn't let him just hang there, there had to be a twist. I hope people or satisfied with it, that they weren't really expecting it, or perhaps it's possible...sort of. :D

TBC