6 months ago


Lydecker steered the boat out into the open water, keeping the lights off and his steely eyes peeled for Stadler and his contact. He was drifting at the coordinates Stadler had given him for nearly thirty minutes before a speedboat made its way to him. With the one arm hanging between his knees, Lydecker gripped his gun, trigger finger resting at the side of the barrel.

Once the boat reached close distance, Lydecker made out Stadler's thin layer of receding hair, and the long, thick, and dark wavy hair of a young woman. As the vessel sidled up to his, a pair of feminine hands reached out, one grabbing onto to the railing and the other accidentally grabbing Lydecker's free hand firmly. He met the glance of that young woman, whom must have been Stadler's contact. Her eyes were light brown with little petals of gray blue around her pupils. Genuinely intriguing eyes.

He yanked his hand back in shock. She was striking, really, and in a moment, he knew why. Save for her beautiful browned honey eyes with the gray blue inner rim, this young woman looked just like her mother, Anastasia Antonopoulos. She seemed to be about Max's age, which confirmed that she was not Lydecker's daughter, since Anastasia disappeared before Tony was born, and that Anastasia was alive for at least a few years after she disappeared – long enough to have another child. It also meant that this girl was half-sister to his son.

Struck speechless, he faltered a moment and she hesitated, unsure of the white haired man.

"You are Donald?" she asked, then looked to Stadler for confirmation. The other man nodded and she turned her stare back to him.

Lydecker wanted to ask about her mother immediately. Was she still alive? Had she had a good life after Manticore? Who was this girl's father? Did she have more children? Instead, he attempted to confirm his theory. "You're Sibyl."

The young woman stretched out her slender arm and offered her hand, her eyes wide with surprise. "Yes," she answered. "I go by my middle name, Alethea. Alethea Sarantis."

Her affirmation proved the theory. Anastasia had mentioned a couple of times that if she ever had a daughter, she would name her Sibyl. His brain caught up to him and he stuttered out, "Alethea, Greek for… truth."

She smiled, her teeth so white against the exotic hue of her skin. "You knew my mother," she stated.

I loved your mother, Lydecker thought. He laid the gun down at his feet and nodded, hoping his poker face was still intact. "She was quite a woman. Sharp, beautiful." Passionate, he wanted to add, but it didn't seem appropriate to say to her daughter.

Alethea cast sadness into the dark water, as if it was the catcher of despair. "She was."

He got the distinct feeling that her use of past tense denoted finality. It would have been a fool's errand to hope he could somehow get her back after all these years. It was as if he'd been robbed of that hope prematurely. Anastasia was gone.

He wanted to reach out to Alethea, comfort her somehow; after all, he'd mourned the loss of two women he'd loved before, but he didn't know how to give solace to another. He finally tore his gaze away from her and found Stadler's beady little eyes watching their interaction. He seemed to have no idea how Lydecker knew Alethea's mother, and was probably confusedly trying to piece together some kind of speculation.

"Alethea is an undergrad. She worked closely with her mentor Dr. Adair," he offered, shifting in his seat, causing their boat to rock a bit on the water. "She has a genius-level IQ."

Lydecker regarded the man across from him. Had he merely picked Alethea out of the pool of genius protégées in order to satisfy their deal, or was this truly coincidence?

The young woman met Lydecker's inquisitive eyes again, shrugging off Stadler's praise. "After what happened to Dr. Adair, I knew I had to leave. Or hide. No one wants to be blown up, and whoever was after her could just as easily find me."

Her safety was definitely paramount. It seemed too accidental that she had worked with their only contact at the University. "Did you have vision to what Dr. Adair was working on before she was killed?"

"Yes," she answered simply. "And I want to help you. Do you have the pages of text with the markings on them?"

He grimaced a second, weighing how much he should reveal to her. But he had a feeling about her, an instinct. He followed it. "I can take you to them," he said vaguely.

The dark haired woman studied Lydecker, then turned to Stadler. "I will go with him," she told him. She stood up suddenly, causing their boat to rock, and prepared to step onto Lydecker's vessel.

"You sure?" Stadler asked, but he grabbed the side of Lydecker's boat to balance the vessels.

She nodded and Lydecker reached a hand out to help steady her as she placed one booted foot into his boat.

"Are we square now?" Stadler asked as Alethea's other foot landed on his former CO's bench.

Coward, Lydecker thought again. His brows bushed together for a moment. "Goodbye, Spiro."

Stadler couldn't get out of there fast enough. He started up the motor and sped off into the darkness without another word.

Alethea sat down on the bench and stared into Lydecker's blue eyes. "Mom died six years ago," she offered.


Alec couldn't sleep.

He laid next to Max, him on his back and her on her stomach, both naked as the day they were born, with his eyes wide open and his attention divided between the low ceiling above them and the turmoil of his inner thoughts.

They hadn't really addressed the broken condom. He'd smirked for a fraction of a second at the time, ready to roar proudly that nothing could contain him, but that smug feeling fell quickly as the panic set in.

They weren't ready to be parents, were they? What if he'd actually impregnated her? Now wasn't the right time to bring a baby into the world, this world – not when they were being hunted by government agencies and secret ops teams and White and who knows who else. If he and Max conceived a child, it might mean the prophesy was true, which would mean they couldn't stop what was going to happen. Max would be pregnant, in the operating room, with their baby at the end of White's gunpoint. Which, he thought, was probably the scariest thing he'd ever imagined.

But they could beat White. Even if she was pregnant, they could find a way to best White, remove themselves from danger, have the baby, and live a normal life together. Right?

And if they did, where would they would live? Would the baby have their immunities, including the ones that protected them from the toxicity of Terminal City? And if not, where would they go to make sure their baby was safe? Could they leave their lives in Seattle behind and start over somewhere else? Was there anywhere else where they could go where they wouldn't be running from potential threats and capture?

What about all of their people? If they left, would TC fall apart?

It was with these thoughts that he'd pulled the ragged ripped latex from himself and sauntered to the bathroom to dispose of the condom and bring her something to help clean up their shared mess. He only got as far as wrapping the latex up in toilet paper and tossing it in the trash bin before he felt her presence behind him. He could see her panicked expression in the mirror, and all of those thoughts faded.

He'd turned, told her not to worry. That even though it was possible that something could result from their coupling, they couldn't predict pregnancy. That if they did end up pregnant, they'd figure it out. He'd told her that they'd shared something intimate and special, and he would do any and everything possible to protect them. She had needed the assurance, and if he was honest with himself, so had he. She'd nodded, giving him an uneasy half smile.

But this time, they hadn't even used protection. In the moment, that moment filled with such unbridled love, the fact that neither of them went for the condom felt like a confession, a promise, a devotion, a deliberate choice. It was closer to the truth than language could ever be. She'd made the same confession, the same careful promise, the same deep devotion.

She chose him, too.

Alec smiled up at the ceiling and then turned to face her.

What complex creatures we are, he thought. So in love. He stayed in that quiet awe for two full minutes until he noticed an empty spot on her shoulder blade where two runes used to be.

Shit.

What if that meant something? Was Max pregnant? Would there be another catastrophe? Another block in this fucked up game of prophesy Jenga? He sighed quietly, frustrated on her behalf to not know what the goddamned plan was.

The noise was enough to rouse her. Seeing his state of concern, Max propped up onto her elbow. "What's wrong?"

In that instant, Alec filled with anger, fed up that she had to deal with this – that it was all put on her. And in that same instant, he knew he'd do anything to protect her.

Anything.


The bite of the salty ocean air chilled their faces as Lydecker steered the chartered boat toward the marina, the hull slicing through the waves as if they, too, were subject to his thoughts.

Anastasia had gotten out of Manticore. Escaped? Maybe he'd never know. The fact that Tony even existed proved Manticore hadn't put her down, and the fact that Alethea was born a few years later proved Anastasia had avoided being captured or killed, so how had she ensured her own safety? Had she any help? Someone who could have helped her change her name and get out of the country? Someone like Max's cyber journalist friend?

Alethea had been relatively quiet on the short trip back, but as Lydecker stole a quick glance at Anastasia's daughter, he caught her staring into him, eyebrows tilted as if discerning something.

Anastasia had always been so good at that: discerning things from people's expressions, even micro-expressions people thought they'd masterfully hidden. Their mere turning away from her gaze had seemed to convey something, too, though. Like a kind of definition by absence, a negative space. But his head wasn't a crystal ball, and he wasn't sure if he wanted Alethea picking up on his thoughts, reading too far into his psyche, so he looked away. Anastasia had never pushed him too hard, and now neither did Alethea.

"You shouldn't feel guilty."

"I don't," he responded quickly, keeping his eye on the swells in front of him. Maybe Alethea hadn't honed that particular skill after all.

It was the harsh beating of the hull against the waves which provided the metronomic rhythm to their otherwise quiet, a pounding that echoed in his head as he tried to dispel her statement. If she thought he felt guilty, she was wrong.

Because how could she possibly know anything at all about him? She only knew his name because of Stadler, not because her mother spoke about him. She couldn't have without endangering her own life, or her children's. One curious mouse-click would have alerted Manticore, and immediately sharpened their crosshairs right on the woman and her offspring.

He creased his brows, angry at himself to have unknowingly put Anastasia in that position. She should have had a full life without having to worry about being assassinated by her former employer, or more likely, one of the X-Series soldiers belonging to her former employer. She shouldn't have had to change her name, make up a brand new life and give up her identity.

Goddamn, she was so smart, Lydecker thought. She shouldn't have been my collateral damage.

Just like Beth, he realized. Someone Alethea couldn't possibly know about, another woman whom had fallen victim to his involvement with the military and Manticore. Beth Prime had been his first wife. He'd married her right out of high school, before he'd enlisted in the Marine Corps. They'd only had a few months together as Mr. and Mrs. Lydecker prior to his deployment. A few years into his military career, he'd returned from a deployment to discover Beth had been murdered. Her homicide went unsolved, but the seemingly mysterious circumstances surrounding her death were not so mysterious to him. She'd been made a very personal, very public example. Her death was a direct consequence of his actions.

After the Pulse, Lydecker tried to make sure Beth's records were all sealed. It would have been better if they'd been destroyed, but he couldn't confirm that. He hadn't spoken of Beth since then, and avoided personal relationships thereafter as a kind of countermeasure against any more 'collateral damage.' Avoided them, that is, until Anastasia.

Lydecker squinted against the spray from the boat and tried to force those thoughts to the back of his mind. No, Alethea couldn't have known about Beth. He hadn't even told Anastasia about Beth.

Did she know about Tony? Maybe her mother had mentioned that Alethea had a brother. Even if Anastasia were to trust Alethea not to say anything, bringing up the son she had from a different father would definitely pique Alethea's curiosity. And if Alethea did know about him and thought Lydecker didn't, she wouldn't bring him up now. Knowing what she did about Dr. Adair's work and Lydecker's involvement in it, telling Lydecker about Tony would put them all in jeopardy. So maybe she doesn't know about her own brother, he thought.

And it seemed for once in his life that Stadler hadn't betrayed him by mentioning Manticore, which meant Alethea didn't know about the things Manticore had him do, forced him into doing, after the Protocol's administration, Sandeman's disappearance and Renfro's appointment. The young brunette didn't know about the assassinations he performed, how he had trained the humanity right out of those kids, how ruthless he had been – had to be – in order to keep them alive. He had forgotten who he used to be, and nothing could ever make up for the atrocities they'd faced by his hand.

"You did all you could." Her words settled onto the water below them in an imbalanced dichotomy.

Had he done all he could to tear them down? Had he done all he could to keep them alive?

She kept her stony eyes forward in a solace he could neither understand, nor reciprocate.

Lydecker bowed his head and let her consolation hang in the dense air.