Logan saw the two vans leave. He had given Alicia a tracking device just in case they had tried to take Max away. She had promised to put it on a van, and from the looks of things, she had done so. The bug was plotting their course. He didn't know if Max was in there or the warehouse. Warehouse first, he ordered himself. Alicia had said they would leave them behind.
He went in, and his heart almost stopped to see Max balled up on the floor. He was at her side in an instant, relief flooding him as she groaned slightly.
"Max?" he called to her, slapping her face lightly. "Max, love, wake up now." Her eyes fluttered, and then opened.
"Logan?" she murmured.
Bling was checking on Zack who was also just waking up. Zack blinked a few times, and then tried jumping to his feet. He landed back on the ground, too dizzy to stand. The drug was fading out of his system fast, but it was still pretty strong.
"Where is she?" Zack asked. "How long were we out? Did you track them?"
Logan was confused. Zack was acting like they'd been out for hours. "Alicia left my van maybe twenty minutes ago," he replied.
Max and Zack looked at each other with the same question on their faces. "But she said hours," Max said hesitantly.
"She played them," Zack said mostly to himself. With a sudden rush he remembered the last thing she had said to him. Dear God. What had she done? He wasn't going to lose her now. Not after all this.
"You know which way they went?" he asked Logan.
Logan grinned. "Which way?" he said, "the tracer was still running strong when we came in here."
Zack was relieved. He finally stood, feeling much more clear-headed. Logan helped Max to her feet. "How did she do that," Max wondered aloud. She looked at Zack. "Was she ever like that against the Reds?" Zack shook his head in the negative, pondering the question himself.
"She shot herself up with something," Bling said. "She had a big green syringe in her med case and used it all."
Zack visibly whitened. She had told him she had a poison. Was that it? Maybe it was time release or something. She had taken something that made her super strong for a bit, but would kill her. There had to be a cure for it. An antidote. Something. Anything.
"Zack?" Max said, looking concerned.
"The stuff is going to kill her," he said. "That's why she wanted to get them from us. When she's dead they won't have us." There was a hush as they all digested the realization of the sacrifice she had made for them.
Zack came to a decision without even thinking about it. Wherever they had taken her, it was going to take more than him and Max to get her out, and then save her life. He knew there was one hope in getting an antidote of some kind to her. "You have a laptop?" he asked Logan.
"In the van," Logan said, pointing.
Zack ran to the van, and opened the laptop. The tracking program was still active. The laptop had a cellular modem built into it, and he jumped on the on-line game. He went to the Knights of the Ruby Chalice messages. Only the Dark Knight and the Fair Knight ever posted to each other. He checked who was on-line. Shade wasn't but then he saw it. The Dark Knight of the Chalice was sitting in the Chalice Throne Room.
He jumped into the room. There wasn't time for preliminaries. The game allowed a quick login under his own name, and he used that, not caring if anyone saw him. That was a first.
Zack: Are you Cole?
Dark Knight: Thou art mistaken my Lord, seek ye another mayhap?
Zack: Cut the crap. Alicia is in trouble. Are you Cole?
DK: Who are you?
Zack: A friend of hers.
DK: What happened to her? Is she hurt?
Zack: She's in enemy hands. Assistance will be needed to get her out. She may be sick. Who are your people in Seattle?
DK: We're in Seattle.
Zack: How far from the Space Needle?
DK: I'll be there in twenty minutes.
Zack: Be alone. I'll know if you aren't.
He logged off. "I need to get to the Space Needle ten minutes ago," he said to nobody in particular.
Bling got in the driver's seat. "Strap in," he said. "It's going to be a rough ride. They all barely had time to follow his advice before he was screaming down the streets in the dark.
************
Cole walked up to the base of the Needle cautiously. All of his senses were on high alert. Whoever this Zack guy was, Alicia obviously trusted him a great deal. She had never told anyone about the Knights. It was for communications that were beyond top secret. He knew that nobody could get information out of her no matter how much he or she tried to force it. She had told him willingly about the Knights, and that alone was a scary thought.
Everything was quiet. Except someone was behind him. He wheeled around in a defensive stance and saw a blonde man standing there calmly a few feet from him. How had he snuck up on him like that? Only another Manticore could move that quietly. Another Manticore. She had been working with two X-5's.
"Zack?" he asked.
Zack had checked the perimeter before showing himself. The guy had come alone as ordered. He was either Manticore or an idiot. Probably both. Zack could see the impression of the butt of a gun against his jacket. Maybe the guy wasn't dumb.
"You Cole?" Zack said.
Neither man spoke for a moment as they sized each other up. Cole could see that Zack had been roughed up pretty recently. Was that when Alicia had gotten in trouble? He should have gotten here faster. An hour might have made a difference.
"Where is she?" Cole demanded.
"She's being taken somewhere for transport. We think an airfield outside of the city," Zack said. "What do you know about the green stuff in her med case?"
Alicia had taken Rage? Cole would have laughed if Zack didn't look so serious. She never used that stuff. She only would carry it because Dad had ordered her to. It boosted abilities for a period of time, but made the user sick for a day while they threw off the poison it becomes. She thought it was garbage and threatened all of them about even suggesting using it while they were on assignment with her.
"She took a dose of it?" he said. "How long ago?"
"An hour and a half or so."
She should still be keyed up from it. A few more hours and then it might cause a seizure as she came down off of it. Not a big deal, really. She'd just feel slightly hung-over in the morning.
"She was starting to get the shakes forty minutes ago," Zack continued. He felt frozen when Cole's eyes widened in disbelief.
"It doesn't happen that fast," he said distantly, his humor fading immediately. Did she have a low tolerance to it and it was wearing off too fast? He refocused on Zack. "How much did she take?"
Zack looked a little confused. "She used the syringe."
"The whole thing?" Cole sounded slightly panicked. That realization alone terrified Zack. Manticore soldiers do not panic under any circumstances.
Cole whipped out a comm. device. He keyed it, "622," he said into it.
"622, come back 604," a woman's voice spoke up. Zack was surprised at how his skin crawled hearing them refer to each other by designation numbers.
"How much Rage is dangerous?" he asked urgently.
"One dose is bad for you," she replied. "I'd say more than one dose in a forty-eight hour period could be fatal."
"What about a triple dose all at once?"
"What kind of idiot would do…" he voice trailed off for a moment. When she spoke again, Zack could hear the fear in it. "Christ, no, she didn't. She wouldn't do that. This is a real bad joke 604."
"No joke 622. Can it be stopped?"
"Maybe," she said, clearly upset. "Nobody has ever done this before. 604, why did she do it?"
He keyed off the comm. device without answering. His eyes met Zack's. "You're X-5," he said simply.
Zack nodded. "You know what she is and you still want to help her," Cole asked suspiciously. By rights this guy should be long gone. He had no idea that Alicia's promise extended to all of them. Why should he care anyways?
"I know who she is, that's why I want to help her," Zack snapped. Time was critical now. If this X-6 could help, he'd risk Manticore for Alicia's life. He could deal with the others later.
Cole noted the faint emphasis on "who" when Zack spoke. Alicia awed him. Here was an enemy, wanting to help her. How many times had she lectured, "You have to be able to become the thing the enemy wants you to be. He thinks he's the good guy. He'll want to see you become like him. Once he thinks you have seen the light, he's vulnerable to you." She was the master.
But she had given him the name of the Knights. That was beyond strange. He'd have to ask her about it later. For now, he needed to save her life.
"There's four other X-6's here," Cole said. "I'm going to need every one of them. 622 is the best medic we have, and the others are going to be needed for the Reds." He had read the file Alicia had left behind. She'd kill him if she knew that he knew the combination to her safe, but that was later.
Zack grabbed his cell phone, and dialed Logan's number. This phone's tones were off so that even Max couldn't read it's dialing signal. "Tell Max not to panic when the Calvary arrives at the rendezvous point," he said and then hung up.
Cole took the challenge. They had the firepower, but Zack knew where Alicia was. They were going to have to work together to get her out. He keyed the comm. device. "Pick up ASAP," he said. "Have all gear ready." He looked back at Zack.
"What if I try to take you back to Manticore instead?" he challenged.
If you wanted to, you wouldn't have even mentioned it," Zack replied evenly. This guy was forgetting that they had been trained out of the same manuals.
A few minutes later two SUV's pulled up. Cole motioned towards one. "Lead the way," he said. Zack got in. Never in his wildest imaginations had he ever thought that he would willingly climb into a Manticore-led mission. He thought he would die first. But for Alicia he would.