AN: Continuation of Chapter 6's plan.

Chapter 7

"You seem awfully quiet today Dan. You still sulking about being awake?" Max's voice breaks me out of my reverie. Translation: 'Anything wrong?' Very courteous. Let the games begin.

"Just thinking." She began making a point of striking up periodic conversations with me the day before yesterday. This has interesting results, considering that she uses them as a round-a-bout way to try to get information out of me at the same time I use them for the same thing. It degenerates into an elegant dance of questions with hidden intentions and answers with little or no meaning, all concealed in polite, freely-flowing conversation.

"A penny for your thoughts." Her voice never fluctuates from wry calmness, almost indifference. This is only just beginning, but it won't change through the whole conversation. She's very good at this.

I think quickly for a response that isn't dangerous. As my pulse is still seemingly running at her sufferance, I walk on thin lines between blunt questions and my need for answers, and stubborn refusal and my need to protect my boss and my workplace. For reasons that I can't even begin to fathom, she's walking on edges that give her half of the conversation the same results. This gives little headway to anybody, but since I have the S-15s, I can rewind towards or at the end of this and pick up clues, hesitations in her voice, a shift of the eyes, anything, find consistencies, and go from there.

"I haven't been in a forest since I was a kid." Inconspicuously relevant to my current situation to prevent suspicion, true in case she asks me any questions about it, and as far away as I can get from the subject of my job, which should stall her for awhile. I am immediately proven wrong. A flash of interest strikes her face. I brace myself for whatever hole she's found in that statement.

"Your whole family go, or you have a boyscout troup or something?"

"My family made it a trip every summer." Where is this going? Her eyes are intent on my face, her voice neutrally interested and relaxed. She sees an opening, but I have absolutely no idea what it is.

"Where'd you go?"

"We went to Yosemite."

"Your parents drag you out there to give you the 'country experience', or you live near there anyway?"

"We lived in the city…my mom liked it better there, but my dad needed to get away every now and then, so they'd compromise and have my sister and I rough it a couple weeks a year." She's got something up her sleeve, something I'm going to walk right into it if I don't figure out what she's getting at soon.

"Why'd you live in the city? What'd your parents do?" I walk into it with my eyes closed.

"My mom worked as a hair stylist, before the pulse anyway, we didn't go after. My dad…" Was a journalist. Like me. No guesses what her next question will be, or at least the one after. I'm trapped. The second between her question and my answer stretches, then becomes two. Then three. Max is waiting, all the patience in the world residing in her face.

Whatever I would have fabricated for the end of my sentence is cut off by an abrupt change in Max. Her face tightens as her eyes shift to the trees. All of her relaxed air in replaced by a spring of bunched muscles and squared shoulders. The only fraction of her attention still on me is used to warn me to silence. The line stops, and everyone around me goes through the same change. In less than a second, everyone is facing the same direction with identically expressionless faces. Except for mine, which probably just looks confused.

This has never happened before, and I have no idea what sparked it or what it means. The lack of understanding of what they're doing is unnerving, as is the dead silence that blankets the X-5s as they watch the trees expectantly. It's so quiet that all of the animal noises stand out starkly. I can hear a squirrel chattering nearby, a wood-frog's low croaking, a birdcall that keeps on getting closer…

Zane and Terk burst out of the trees. Their jaws are set and their eyes hard. Zane's voice is clipped and urgent when he speaks.

"There're norms combing the forest in patterns about 3 miles behind us." Max opens her mouth, but Zane answers the unspoken question without a pause. "Neither of us got close enough to tell for sure, but it looks like White's guys. They're not wearing P.D. uniforms, and nobody else would have numbers like that, or be that organized." Now Max does speak, a commanding tone that I've never heard before sliding into her voice.

"What kind of numbers?" Zane trades a look and a low murmur with Terk before answering.

"Somewhere around 50." Tess takes a sharp intake of breath. On my right and left, I can see her and Sean wince.

"Familiars?" Jondy's voice would almost make it seem an idle question. Only the barest trace of concern for whatever a 'familiar' is betrays her. Neither Zane nor Terk answer. Max shakes her head slowly after a moment, her eyes distant.

"They don't usually come in numbers this big. And familiars would've gotten closer before we saw them."

"Unless they're trying to flush us out somewhere." Krit enters his first participation. There is a large pause.

"Flushing us out means having a place that the press can't get to. More likely they're trying to close in on us." Max sounds somewhere between decisive and thinking aloud. "Best bet for that's escape and evade, just in case White's overturned a new leaf, don't go directly to Rendezvous 4, go around in a circle or something first, lose whatever tail you might have. If you get into trouble, call the number. Zane and Jondy take Dan. Go." The last is accompanied by an arm gesture. Jondy grabs me by the back of my collar and drags me backwards 9 feet before I get my footing again. Zane's taken the front, and Jondy thrusts me behind him, almost knocking me to the ground again.

I scramble to stay ahead of her, always reinforced with a sharp shove when I don't move quickly enough. The friendly Jondy I'd been beginning to know is gone, replace with a tight-lipped, cold-eyed, unforgiving…soldier. The one who I've only seen flashes of before. The one that a government operation called Manticore designed.

Zane has changed in the same way. There are no jokes now, no relaxed and easy-going man in front of me. Instead, there is a swift, solemn, straight-backed example of military training. This is what Manticore created. Someone who's ready to fight and kill at a moment's notice. I still don't think he or Jondy would really hurt me, but they do seem different. Focused. Harder. All of the rest of the X-5s, when I saw them in the circle, seemed harder too, like some of their more human traits had been washed away. I'd been starting to think that the government and White were over-reacting, that maybe some of the reports on the X's and their design were exaggerated. It's still possible, since the only change in them so far has been in their demeanor, but seeing them like this makes the claims easier to believe.

Zane sets a grueling pace. By my standards anyway, neither of them even seem winded. We're not quite running, but close to it, and we've been keeping it up for almost two hours. I have a stitch in my side, my lungs are burning, and every muscle in my body seems to ache. The shoves from Jondy are becoming more frequent, and fiercer. My failure to keep up seems to irritate her more every time.

One particular push is twice as hard as the one before it, and I crumple to the ground in a heap beside a bush, gasping for air. All I can feel is a hazy relief for having stopped. It is a full ten seconds before I realize that Zane and Jondy are both on the ground with me. Jondy has a hand on my back to keep me from rising. Something's wrong.

When I continue to pant, Jondy gently but firmly places her hand over my mouth. She's almost lying on top of me.

"Keep quiet." If her lips hadn't been almost touching my ear, I never would have heard it. All the same, Zane scowls at both of us and puts a finger to his lips. Something is very wrong. I carefully slow my breathing, softening it. My lungs are burning, but whatever would scare two grown X-5s is enough to make me not notice.

Seconds pass, then minutes. I can feel Jondy stop breathing altogether. Soft crunching sounds, like several people walking, are coming toward us. In another second I see them: five men moving slowly, barely making a sound on the twigs and sticks beneath them. They'd gotten right on top of us without me hearing a thing. I follow Jondy's lead and hold my breath. Even though it's unlikely that these people have any interest in me, illogical fear begins to twist my stomach. My heart is pounding, so loudly that they must hear it from ten yards away. I can feel sweat building in my palms.

Through the bush, I can see them clearly. All have guns, though I have no idea what kind, and four of them are holding theirs ready in their hands. Those four are scanning the trees and ground-line in every direction with sharp eyes and hard faces. They look like murder walking. The fifth has his gun slung over his shoulder, and has eyes only for a small device in his hands. He stops suddenly, and turns to look directly at us. Zane and Jondy both grip something in their boots. He must be able to see us now, I feel like a deer in headlights. I'm not sure I'll be able to move when they start toward us. The guy checks his device again, and I can see him swallow hard. He motions his men on again.

As they continue past us, and their sound fades, all three of us exhale simultaneously. The X's take their hands away from their boots and slowly stand up, bewilderment momentarily replacing their expressionless masks.

"They had a heat sensor, why didn't they…?" Zane starts softly, but Jondy cuts him off.

"Maybe they thought they were outmatched. Let's take luck while we've got it and go." I get up, just as soon to have more distance between me and the five of them, but Zane doesn't move.

"But they would have had rein-"

"Come on!" Jondy starts walking and motions me to follow.

"It doesn't feel right. White'll kill them himself if he finds out they abandoned an order. They know that." But his voice sounds relenting, and he's moving again. Nobody says another word.

They were afraid. The sudden realization processes in my brain. I never would have believed it if I hadn't seen it. The reports I read said they were taught that nothing mattered as long as the objective was accomplished and Manticore was safe. Nothing. They were designed and trained to ignore fear, but they were scared today. Maybe…they're not as hard as I was thinking they were.

Several hours of walking later, long after twilight has blanketed the forest, lights begin to shine ahead of us. A town. I'm actually going to sleep in a building tonight. Amazing. Even through the haze of exhaustion and strained muscles, I can't help hoping that that's why we're heading toward lights. More lights shine through the trees, then more, looking like fireflies gathering in the darkness. Finally the trees end, and I'm standing on the outskirts of civilization, looking at a small, scattered clump of houses. Jondy and Zane hurry me into the second of these, watching over their shoulders cautiously. This must be rendezvous four.