Alicia was immediately on the defensive. Whatever he was thinking, it wasn't good. He had a remote control, and clicked a button. On the monitor over his shoulder the roof tape started playing. Logan had rewound it, and it was obvious what he had seen.
Alicia shoved down the embarrassment and anger, and wrapped herself in an air of cool detachment. She'd been trained to push away all feeling in a confrontation, and let the other person get worked up. She was very good at it, which is what earned her the nickname Absolute Zero.
Logan stood, and hit the stop button. He had been hoping to rock her with the tape, but she'd remained perfectly neutral. Figures. Cold-hearted Manticore bitch. "I don't know how you did it," he said mockingly, "but you set everything neat as a chessboard. I must say I'm impressed. Was all that action taught in Manticore graduate school, or did you just wing it?"
Her eyes narrowed dangerously. "Fuck you!" she snapped, and turned to leave.
"What, Zack wasn't enough?"
That was the wrong thing to say. She was across the room in less than a second. Logan jerked back, the back of his knees hitting the chair, and he fell into it. She grabbed the armrests and leaned towards him menacingly.
"You think you know me?" she hissed. "You think because you've heard the recollections of a nine year old girl that means you know my life? You don't know Jack. What Zack is to me is none of your business." She straightened, looking at Logan like he was something she found on the bottom of her shoe.
"Zack's your ticket to the other X-5's," Logan snapped, not intimidated by her. He leaned back in his chair casually. "You know it, and you were just on the roof proving that you're willing to do anything to get that information. You know, at least the working girls on the street are honest that they're selling it."
"What the hell do you know?" she snarled, and then picked up on her coldest tone possible. "You sit behind a camera without the testicular fortitude to actually show your face, and you pretend to know what the real world is. You think you know what responsibility is because you make it your duty to report on idiots doing piddling crimes? When have you ever had real responsibility?"
He went to respond, but she overrode him easily. "Tell me Logan, what was your responsibility at 12? Making the baseball team? No, daddy would have bought you that starting position, wouldn't he? Ever have someone tell you that you're being sent on a race, and losing means the death of you and all of your siblings?"
"How about at 16? Let me see, your biggest stress was taking some equally rich girl out to an overpriced restaurant in your flashy car and then trying to get her in the backseat later, right? I doubt if stress ever included letting someone put a gun to the back of your head and telling him that if he really thinks you all should be terminated, he should start with you. I bet at 16 you never stood there, knowing that if he pulled the trigger the ones deciding the fate of your siblings would deliberate covered in your blood. You're standing there, knowing that you've won, your siblings will be fine, but the person holding the gun might just pull the trigger out of spite, and you have to let him."
"You don't know me. You don't know what I've had to do to survive, and I will tell you this point blank, if you think I'm playing Zack, then you don't know him either. Tell me o great Eyes Only, what the hell do you know?"
He stood, looking her directly in the eyes. "I know you are the genetically engineered killing machine that the X-5's were supposed to be. Except they were obviously born with what you lack. Decency. A conscience. Even a soul."
He suddenly found himself off the ground, her hand clinched tightly around his throat as she lifted him easily. His hands hit at her arm, but it was like trying to break steel. "Genetically engineered killing machine?" she said almost conversationally, a feral grin on her face. She suddenly yanked him down so that their faces were maybe an inch apart. "You ain't seen nothing yet."
She threw him into the wall, dazing him, and almost knocking him unconscious. In a daze, he heard the front door slam.
He wasn't sure how much time passed when he heard Max's voice. "Logan?" He forced his eyes to focus on Max's worried face. Cindy and Zack were standing behind her. "Logan, what happened?" Max asked.
His head was throbbing. "Alicia," he muttered, trying to clear his head.
"She attacked you?" Max asked, menace in her voice. The X-6 finally showed her colors. Max knew a dead X-6 the moment she found her.
Logan looked up at Zack. "I told her that I knew she was playing us all," he said. "She got mad at being found out and I ended up in the wall." He paused for a moment. "Where is she?" he asked vaguely remembering a door slam.
"Girl went for a hike," Cindy said. "She blazed on out of here then we found you."
"She's still got to be in the building," Zack said. "It was just a minute ago."
Logan got to his feet with some help from Max. He went to the computer, and began flipping through the different cameras in the building. The stairs were clear. Nobody was in the elevator. The halls on the floors below were clear. Where was she? He switched to the roof camera, not seeing Zack's eyes widening behind him. If he could see the roof now, had he seen it when they were up there? Cale had said he'd checked on Alicia, but never said how. If he had said something to her…
Logan switched to another floor, and they all saw her for a second. She slid out the window onto a fire escape, he cut to the outside, and they watched as she went down the side at lightning speed. She hit the ground, and took off at a dead run.
Logan turned to say something, anything, but Cindy and Max were looking at the empty space Zack had been occupying a few seconds before. The front door hung open, and they could hardly even hear his footsteps as he headed for the outside.