Lydecker hadn't seen his former second-in-command, Spiro Stadler, in nearly thirty years. They hadn't parted on good terms; hell, they hadn't really parted on any terms at all, really, so he wasn't too keen on seeing him now. But the fact was, he needed Stadler. He was Lydecker's only contact at the University's Languages Department, who also happened to owe him his life, and therefore was the only person who might actually be able to read Max's runes, or at least recognize the text and give them something to go on.
Stadler's potential expertise was the reason Lydecker waited, ensconced by shadows, in the hall outside the Languages Department where he knew Stadler would turn up for their meet. Lydecker checked his wristwatch; it was past 2100 hours. Few students hung around the Ilisia campus so late – most had probably gone home for the night.
Remembering how clipped and tight Stadler's voice had been on the phone brought him a sense of satisfaction, a powerful, prideful feeling that Lydecker was still in charge, even though they parted ways all those years ago. Stadler was still afraid of his Commanding Officer.
Let him be, Lydecker thought.
The door to Philosophy opened into the hallway and Stadler stepped out to greet his former CO.
Stadler had rounded out a bit over the better part of two decades. His hair was receding, thinning, graying. His rosy cheeks weighed his face down near his chin, which made him look slovenly and anxious. The last time Lydecker saw him, he was happy, fit, in his dress blues, still in the military, with a beautiful brunette on his arm.
"Don." He nodded.
Lydecker stepped into the din of the hallway. "Spiro," he acknowledged, gripping the man's hand tightly. "How's the wife?"
Stadler pursed his lips as if preparing to give Lydecker a long spiel, and shook his head.
He knew what happened to Spiro's wife. After he came back from Maseru, he followed Spiro's career and life for a few years as it spiraled out of the military. The woman Spiro had fallen in love with, the woman which Spiro had begged Lydecker to let him go home to, she had married Spiro six short months after Lydecker's unexpected return to base. She cheated on him, divorced him a year later, and had two kids with someone else. Spiro hadn't taken it lightly – got himself legitimately discharged after a bout of alcoholism and went into teaching Languages at University.
"You know how they are," Spiro dismissed.
Lydecker nodded. "Sure." The less small talk, the better.
Stadler drew his dark brows together. "Are you sure you want to cash in my debt in on this? It sounds pretty dangerous. I heard about what happened to Dr. Adair."
Same old Spiro, thought Lydecker. Always trying to save his own ass.
"Why is this so important to you?" Spiro fidgeted and when silence got the better of him, he finally met Lydecker's eyes.
Lydecker almost laughed. Here Spiro was, again, trying to weasel his way out of something that was way bigger than him, giving no assurances that he would actually pull through on this promise.
Spiro took a deep breath. "Is it one of your kids? Is that why?"
The Colonel turned to look around. He had kept few tabs on Stadler over time, and it had been foolish not to assume Stadler had kept none on him. Manticore had become sloppy since the '09 escape, which made conspiracy theorists' days. Those kids running around free meant exposure for everyone.
He turned back to the rotund man. "You're right. It is dangerous. You need to keep this as quiet as possible. If you start asking around, start finding too many willing sources, that puts you in their crosshairs. You get caught, I can't come save you this time."
The former second-in-command took a small step toward his former CO, eyes widening. He'd always responded to the dramatic. He looked around suspiciously before whispering, "I might know someone who might be able to help."
"Might." He was losing patience with the man whose goddamned hand he shook at the funeral of the two soldiers who hadn't made it back from that mission, the man who informed their superiors that Lydecker did not make it out of the compound, had been killed in action. He grinded his teeth and scowled, trying to reign in his anger.
Stadler's hands came up defensively. "Deck, I-"
"You are a sorry excuse for a soldier," he said. "Turning tail and running at any sign of trouble like a spooked horse." Lydecker pulled a few pictures from his jacket pocket and pressed them to Stadler's softened chest. "If you don't know this language, find me someone who does."
"Wait," Stadler said when Lydecker turned to leave. "If I find someone, are we square?"
She looked so innocent with half of her face obscured by the pillow, and her bed-head, but that never stopped Alec from fantasizing about all of the things he wanted to do with her, to her, have her do to him. He pulled his body closer to hers and snuck his face to hers for a kiss.
Max immediately responded, sucking his bottom lip between hers and nibbling on it.
"Max," he started, his lip still stretched between them. He hoped it sounded like a playful warning. He pulled her closer and rolled her on top of him, the motion pulling his lip from her mouth.
She straddled him and sat up, drawing the bedsheet around her shoulders while Alec stared at her naked chest, topped with rosy peaks, her bare stomach, smoothed, even though the runes gave certain areas the appearance of sharp angles, and to his pleasant surprise, her already heated center, which teased his hardness. "Yes, Alec?"
His eyes rolled back at the sound of her practically purring his name. His hands ghosted up her thighs to grasp her hips. He pulled them down on his, pressuring her to grind on him harder. "I can't think."
"Well, whose fault is that?" She swayed slowly in place, the skin of her sex massaging the length of him.
He cleared his throat. "Yours." He released her hips, only to pull them down again, relishing in the ecstasy of her soft, perfect skin rubbing his shaft.
"Is that so?"
He mumbled in the affirmative. "If I can't think, you can bet it's because of something you did."
She rolled her hips forward and back.
"Or are doing," he amended, his jaw working to keep his wits about him.
Max dropped one hip and rocked back, creating what she could only assume from the painfully erotic look on his face was a heavenly friction. "Can you think, yet?"
When she rocked forward again, Alec's hooded eyes betrayed his longing to feel the weight of her breasts in his palms, in his mouth. He salivated and shook his head.
"What else is new?"
In one quick move, Alec pulled her down to him and rolled them over so he was now resting between her legs. "You're hilarious."
Her eyes opening slowly with pleasure, Max held back a laugh.
He considered saying what was on his mind. Instead, he asked, "are you sure you want to do this?"
The corners of her mouth turned up a fraction of an inch. "It's the only way we can do this."
Resolutely, Alec agreed. "Alright, then." Shifting his weight to one elbow, Alec swept his hand up the side of her torso and raised his thumb to caress her cheek. He lowered his head and brushed his lips against hers, softly.
Max pulled at his lower back, trying to pull him closer. "And?"
He lifted his head again, her expectant gaze stealing his breath, and then said exactly what was on his mind. "I'm in love with you."
Lydecker returned to The Anastasia to find the transgenic duo grabbing a few extra items from their baggage. He let himself in and closed the door behind him.
Alec wanted to make sure he had some form of weapon on his person, and had pulled a few small knives in a case he could fit in his cargo pants' pocket.
Max, on the other hand, was rifling through her bag for some money.
"Alec," Lydecker greeted. "Max."
"We were just about to grab some brunch," Max started. "But I think first I need to get some clothes. I'm kind of exposed like this," she said, raising her rune-laden arms to illustrate. Plus, they'd been there a month and she was getting tired of wearing the same three pairs of jeans.
"Pick anything you like – sky's the limit," Alec said, smiling.
Max knew they hadn't much money with them, but money was never a problem when being transgenic. Using her talents to win money, or covertly lifting smaller items had been two of her greatest pastimes as a teenage grifter trying to stay under the radar. "Sixty is the limit," she said, pushing the folded bills into her jeans pocket.
"Get me somethin', too," Alec said playfully.
"You're not going with?"
Alec and Lydecker shared a look suggestive of the ludicrous nature of her comment before he faced her. "Max, no guy in the history of man has liked going clothes shopping with his woman."
She let it slide, since she liked him referring to her as his woman.
"Unless it's lingerie. I'd go if it was lingerie." His eyes twinkled with mischievous fun.
Smiling at her man, Max said, "Alright, Romeo, I'll meet you at the café in forty-five?"
Lydecker interjected. "Better make it thirty."
As the brunette soldier bounded out of the room, Alec faced the former colonel. "What'd you find out?"
Lydecker crossed the distance between them. The only inkling Alec could discern that this was serious was the way the white-haired man's bushy eyebrows moved as he spoke. "There was an earthquake in Chile, mostly structural damage."
Alec had been afraid that any catastrophes would coincide with runes disappearing from Max's skin. "She has a missing symbol on her neck – well, from her neck."
Frowning, Lydecker shook his head.
"I'll talk to Dix and ask him to cross reference the symbol and 'earthquake'. I'm crossing my fingers that they are not related. I don't like the idea that there could be prophesied natural disasters. It's not right, and she definitely won't take it as a coincidence."
"I'll hear from my contact soon," Lydecker assured.
But that assurance did nothing to assuage Alec's building anxiety about Max's runes and the gradual increase of disasters. Was something or someone out there making all of this happen, or is Max just the proverbial crystal ball?
"There's something else," Lydecker said. When Alec looked up, he continued. "Have you heard of the Dark Web?"
The transgenic's brows came together as he looked left and his eyes danced right. "A subsection of the deep web. Operates internet black markets – a playground for all kinds of hidden services and illegal behavior."
"Right," he nodded. "I once walked in on Sandeman hacking the Dark Web. He was thinking out loud in fragments, talking about how this couldn't be true. 'Not my kids. Not my kids.' His fingers typed codes and algorithms so fast I could barely understand how he was doing what he was doing. He found out how his soldiers' services were being sold."
Alec grinded his teeth, lips forming a grimace that transformed his face into pure ire. "I always thought we did Manticore's bidding, not whoever's bidding paid top dollar."
"Black market deals, fraud, corruptions, pornography, assassinations – all just a handful of services Manticore allowed to help fund its endgame."
"Which is?"
"I don't know. But this would have been when you and Max were young – around the time of your meetings with Sandeman."
He was sure the longer they talked about this, the closer he would get to breaking his teeth from the force of the grinding. "We were children." He couldn't understand how anyone could force children into that kind of servitude.
"Yes, I know. I didn't know about the dark net missions then. Sometimes, a few of you were in solitary or psy-ops, and I wouldn't see them for weeks. If they came back damaged…" he trailed.
"Who did it," Alec ground out. "What sick son of a bitch sent children out to pedophiles, or to murder people?"
Lydecker shook his head. The injustice seemed to be what bothered the blonde soldier the most. "I'm sorry, son, I don't know. Someone higher than me. Someone higher than Sandeman."
Alec reeled back. "Sandeman was not Manticore's founding father?"
Again, the former colonel's countenance fell. "Sandeman started Manticore, but military got involved and government started funding. Our military? Our government? I don't know. I just know that Sandeman was beside himself with fury, his eyes wild as he realized he was part of something so merciless, so cold-blooded, and that someone was using his genius to their benefit, using his kids."
Something niggled at the back of Alec's mind, like a question he had asked years ago being answered. A few pieces were falling into place, forming more edges of the puzzle. "Okay, that makes sense, if it was right around the time Max and I were meeting with Sandeman. One of my recovered memories is Sandeman running around his office destroying stuff, saying we had to forget everything." He remembered the crazed look in Sandeman's gray-blue eyes, the fear and paranoia working overtime. "And then I saw you administering Forget-Me-Not to Max. She was so scared."
This piqued Lydecker's interest. "You saw that? Can you still make the connection?"
Alec nodded, somewhat begrudgingly. He didn't necessarily want to let Lydecker know what kind of abilities he had or that he and Max were connected in this way, but he couldn't lie his way out of this one.
"And you can control it."
At this he bristled. "I try."
"Can you see her now?"
Closing his eyes, Alec concentrated.
Max stood in front of a booth at a street faire, two bags in one hand, while she looked at one of the scarves in the vendor's display. "This one's pretty," Max said.
The woman behind the table smiled at her, one eye brighter than the other. Despite his connection, Alec could tell this woman had really bad cataracts. She probably could not see the few runes that peeked out from Max's shirt.
A scuffle broke out a few booths from where Max stood. She left the scarf hanging from the loop and peered over. To Alec, it appeared as if she was thinking about getting involved. But when she saw the scuffle, so did Alec.
A young Greek boy had his arm twisted halfway around his back, his face screwed up in pain as he tried to lift himself onto his toes to alleviate the pain.
One of the two older boys turned the young boy around. "Stealing is wrong," Max heard them say in unison. They twisted the younger boy's wrist until Max heard it crack.
The boy screamed out, "My wrist! They broke my wrist!"
Max took a step forward, but froze in place when she saw the faces of the two bullies. Twin faces showed their catlike eyes – green eyes with vertical slits like reptiles. The boys also sported protruding upper lips, nearly split at the center, with enlarged pores where she expected them to have whiskers, but there were none. Perhaps they had shaved them off or plucked them to blend in with the public a little better. "Too much cat in their DNA," she mumbled.
The twin terrors were also particularly hirsute, long sideburns forming chops down to their chins. No ten year old boy could have that much hair, Max and Alec simultaneously reasoned.
"Stealing is wrong," the two boys repeated, dropping the boy's arm. The sobbing Greek boy, tears streaming down his face, took off in the opposite direction as two adults approached the bullies.
Max flinched to run toward the two feline boys, presumably to intercept the adults before they got themselves hurt, but as soon as she took her first step, the small hybrids darted to their north and disappeared into the crowd of people.
