Chapter 13:
The pound of feet pounded against stairs had Logan's head whipping up from the carpet he'd been fixating on for the last ten minuets. Zack grabbed the doorjamb as he flew into the room, Syl close on his heels. Wordlessly, all eyes in the room locked onto Logan's weary gaze, and then panned the room to land on Max's bed. Max was a barely recognizable lump under the bright purple quilt and piles of equally bright pillows.
Zack cursed, quick and viciously, under his breath. "What the hell happened?" He kept his voice low in respect of Max's sleeping state, though a couple dozen of uniformed marines could bust into the room through the window and take out the opposite wall with some a couple of M80s and she probably wouldn't have known it.
Though Logan's voice was cold, icy cold, with deceptive calm, his eyes were a storming blue that Syl, as a trained observer, felt gave away his every emotion. "I don't know, I was hoping you could tell me that." The memory of having to practically carry Max in the house would probably be forever burnt in his mind.
No one said another word as Zack quickly crossed the room, stepping over piles of unfolded clothes and piles of dirty dishes. When he reached the edge of the bed, he roughly pulled back the edge of the blanket till Max's head was exposed. "Max? Can you wake up for a second?" Zack spoke softly and soothingly. The only acknowledgment was Max rolling over and pulling the blanket back over her head with a short, low moan.
Zack swore again, turning away from the bed while he roughly dragged his hand through his hair, kicking stuff out of the way as he walked over to stand in front of the window that looked over the backyard. Sun glinted off the surface of the small lake across the yard. He had options, of course, but very few of them. And now that Cale was involved, these options were quickly diminishing. He was going to beat the sh** out of Zane for telling him, soon as he got the situation under control. It was much easier to keep Lydecker from finding out about Tinga or Krit's seizures, but when your second in command was down with them, it became more difficult. "Syl, your unofficially SIC until Max is back."
Syl nodded, accepting the temporary promotion from her normal position of third in command with a sinking feeling in her stomach. "This is her first seizure in almost a year," she said.
"She was lucky last time." Zack said turning his face away from the window for the slightest moment. "She was in Berlin on assignment and she was able to just hide out till it passed, since she didn't have to check in for six or seven days."
"True. This was a little to close. Zane said that if…" She trailed off as they both looked at Logan, who was still staring at them icily. His eyes narrowed into icy blue slits.
Zack audibly sighed, his fingers tapping on the windowsill, whether it be out of impatience or nervousness could not be determined. "What's it going to take to keep this little tid-bit of information out of print?" He honestly hadn't meant to sound so, well, ungrateful, but the words were out before he could think about it.
Logan met Zack's eyes unwaveringly. "An explanation on why this is a big secret might make me conveniently forget about everything that happened today." He said simply.
Zack didn't bother beating around the bush. He spoke low, his voice carrying all kinds of undercurrents of violence. "You remember Eva, right?" At Logan's surprised facial expression, Zack sneered. "I know you went through our psych files, and Eva's all over them. Well, Max had her first major seizure when she was nine; they were going to kill her just like they did Jack and Tia. Eva tried to protect Max, she took a bullet between the eyes for her effort." If it was possible, Logan wasn't quite sure, but Zack's voice froze over to a new degree of coldness. "I wasn't about to lose another one of my brother's or sisters, so it was that point where I ordered them all to hide the seizures at all cost. If they found out that we still suffered from them, it doesn't matter how old we are, they'll still do what they do to all the Manticore mistakes." Logan remained silent as Zack stalked out of the room as quickly as he'd entered moments before.
Syl closed her eyes briefly while she leaned back against the wall. The blonde of her hair contrasted vividly against the sky blue that Max had painted it on impulse a couple of months ago. The memory of being sixteen and hiding in a bathroom stall while she silently tremored popped into her head like it had happened yesterday, rather than the seven years ago when she had her last seizure. It scared the hell out of her even to think of her own seizures, so it was easy to see Logan, who didn't even know about them in the first place, didn't know what the hell to think seeing Max have one first hand.
"They're caused when we lack seratonin." Syl said wearily. "When the geneticist screwed around with our genetic code, they messed with one chromosome. Now we compensate the lack with tryptophan."
Logan vaguely remembered seeing Zane pop a handful of pills in his mouth. "Tryptophan, that's the amino acid found in milk and turkey, right? They used to sell that as a homeopathic treatment for neurological conditions…" Logan nodded. "I guess that makes sense."
Impressed, Syl cocked her head. "We take that on a daily basis, but still once or twice a year, we'll get hit with a really bad seizure, like you saw today. They are severe enough that we have to take an injection of something called tryptoephire; it not only suppresses the seizure with a high concentrated dose of tryptophan, it has a small dosage of epinephrine to keep us from going to a coma, basically."
"That explains the sleeping." Logan said halfway to himself.
Syl nodded. "You know how milk makes you tired? Times that by about twenty with this stuff. Max is going to be out for a good two or three days at least."
Logan pondered this a moment. "Do all of you have seizures?"
"I don't, or at least, I haven't had one for a long time. Zack has very few, and they are very mild anyway. Krit and Tinga's are more severe, but Max's are more often, if slightly milder." It was hard for Logan to imagine anyone having a worse seizure than what he has seen that afternoon.
He had tons more questions, and he fully intended to have each and everyone answered, but the shrill of the phone on Max's desk made them both jump. Syl walked over to the desk warily, grabbing the phone as she checked the caller ID. Logan's eyes widened at the stream of profanity that came from her mouth.
"Zack!" She yelled, "Its Lydecker. I think he knows something's up."
The phone rang for a third time just as Zack ran back into the room. Before Syl even realized what he was doing, Logan grabbed the cordless phone on the desk behind him and stabbed it on with his index finger. Any protest Syl or Zack might have made was cut off with the flick of his wrist. "Hello?" He said calmly, sounding ten times more confident than he really felt.
"Where the hell is Zack and Max? Is Syl there too?" Lydecker's annoyance was clear. "And why the hell are you answering their phone?"
"Max is here." It was obvious, even without the move of a single muscle that Zack and Syl were now in defensive stances, ready to pounce in a millisecond, should Logan screw this up. He'd better make it good then. "But I don't have the slightest idea where Syl and Zack are. Last I saw they were camped out somewhere quiet over your way working on computers. As for the phone, Max is packing and she asked me to answer it for her."
Lydecker paused a moment. "Packing? What for?" His voice was stone cold with suspicion.
"Well, we were coming back to base to get this cleared by you, but I think you saved us the trip." Logan began pacing back and forth across the room, scratching the back of his head with one hand as he pulled a story out of the top of his head. "I am having trouble convincing the shareholders of what I am trying to do with this article, so I asked Max to come with me to talk to them and demonstrate some things that I can't explain to them without her help."
"And she agreed to this?" The way Max had referred to Cale as 'the fucking reporter', it was hard to believe that she would do a favor for him. "Are you blackmailing her or something?"
Logan let out a forced clip of laughter. "No, I just told her she could eat where ever she wanted when ever she wanted."
Syl smiled briefly. He was good. Very good.
"I wanted to have one of the commanding officers," Logan continued, "but I figured that you rather have your first in command close to base, so I thought you'd be more apt to letting Max go for a week rather than Zack."
"A week? It's going to take that long?"
"It could be before that." Depending on when the hell Max decides to wake up. "I am really not sure at this point."
When Logan hung up the phone they all let out a breath they hadn't known they'd been holding. His voice was that eerie calm again. "I just bought her a week to get better. If she isn't up and back to normal by then, I think she's in the wrong line of work."
Logan really wasn't in the mood to suffer through another bumbling gratitude speech, threat, or anything else for that matter from an X5 today, so he sat back down warily. "I think you guys better get back to base before they realize your gone." Syl nodded, understanding impeccably. "I'll be in the car." She said in a low voice before stepping out of the room.
"You staying here?" Zack asked, almost as if it were a challenge for him to say 'no.'
"I'm not going anywhere." Logan said evenly.
Zack dropped the bottle of pills he'd carried in the room with him on the dresser. "If Max wakes up, she might or she might not, I have no idea, can you try and shove some of those down her throat, and some food if you can. It'll help her get over the tryptoephire quicker."
"Will do." Logan muttered as he leaned back in his chair, idly wondering if he'd just committed his first felony.
AN: Okay, this is the official end of the expositionary bullsh**. May the shipper goodness begin.
Oh, also, I've been forgetting to thank my wonderful beta's; Cat, Anna, and Karen, for helping me so much and god knows I need a lot of it. I also want to thank everone for all the feedback I've been getting. I've replied to as many as I felt needed one, like if you ask a question or something, so if you do have questions, go ahead a voice them and I'll be sure to write you back. Thanks again!
The pound of feet pounded against stairs had Logan's head whipping up from the carpet he'd been fixating on for the last ten minuets. Zack grabbed the doorjamb as he flew into the room, Syl close on his heels. Wordlessly, all eyes in the room locked onto Logan's weary gaze, and then panned the room to land on Max's bed. Max was a barely recognizable lump under the bright purple quilt and piles of equally bright pillows.
Zack cursed, quick and viciously, under his breath. "What the hell happened?" He kept his voice low in respect of Max's sleeping state, though a couple dozen of uniformed marines could bust into the room through the window and take out the opposite wall with some a couple of M80s and she probably wouldn't have known it.
Though Logan's voice was cold, icy cold, with deceptive calm, his eyes were a storming blue that Syl, as a trained observer, felt gave away his every emotion. "I don't know, I was hoping you could tell me that." The memory of having to practically carry Max in the house would probably be forever burnt in his mind.
No one said another word as Zack quickly crossed the room, stepping over piles of unfolded clothes and piles of dirty dishes. When he reached the edge of the bed, he roughly pulled back the edge of the blanket till Max's head was exposed. "Max? Can you wake up for a second?" Zack spoke softly and soothingly. The only acknowledgment was Max rolling over and pulling the blanket back over her head with a short, low moan.
Zack swore again, turning away from the bed while he roughly dragged his hand through his hair, kicking stuff out of the way as he walked over to stand in front of the window that looked over the backyard. Sun glinted off the surface of the small lake across the yard. He had options, of course, but very few of them. And now that Cale was involved, these options were quickly diminishing. He was going to beat the sh** out of Zane for telling him, soon as he got the situation under control. It was much easier to keep Lydecker from finding out about Tinga or Krit's seizures, but when your second in command was down with them, it became more difficult. "Syl, your unofficially SIC until Max is back."
Syl nodded, accepting the temporary promotion from her normal position of third in command with a sinking feeling in her stomach. "This is her first seizure in almost a year," she said.
"She was lucky last time." Zack said turning his face away from the window for the slightest moment. "She was in Berlin on assignment and she was able to just hide out till it passed, since she didn't have to check in for six or seven days."
"True. This was a little to close. Zane said that if…" She trailed off as they both looked at Logan, who was still staring at them icily. His eyes narrowed into icy blue slits.
Zack audibly sighed, his fingers tapping on the windowsill, whether it be out of impatience or nervousness could not be determined. "What's it going to take to keep this little tid-bit of information out of print?" He honestly hadn't meant to sound so, well, ungrateful, but the words were out before he could think about it.
Logan met Zack's eyes unwaveringly. "An explanation on why this is a big secret might make me conveniently forget about everything that happened today." He said simply.
Zack didn't bother beating around the bush. He spoke low, his voice carrying all kinds of undercurrents of violence. "You remember Eva, right?" At Logan's surprised facial expression, Zack sneered. "I know you went through our psych files, and Eva's all over them. Well, Max had her first major seizure when she was nine; they were going to kill her just like they did Jack and Tia. Eva tried to protect Max, she took a bullet between the eyes for her effort." If it was possible, Logan wasn't quite sure, but Zack's voice froze over to a new degree of coldness. "I wasn't about to lose another one of my brother's or sisters, so it was that point where I ordered them all to hide the seizures at all cost. If they found out that we still suffered from them, it doesn't matter how old we are, they'll still do what they do to all the Manticore mistakes." Logan remained silent as Zack stalked out of the room as quickly as he'd entered moments before.
Syl closed her eyes briefly while she leaned back against the wall. The blonde of her hair contrasted vividly against the sky blue that Max had painted it on impulse a couple of months ago. The memory of being sixteen and hiding in a bathroom stall while she silently tremored popped into her head like it had happened yesterday, rather than the seven years ago when she had her last seizure. It scared the hell out of her even to think of her own seizures, so it was easy to see Logan, who didn't even know about them in the first place, didn't know what the hell to think seeing Max have one first hand.
"They're caused when we lack seratonin." Syl said wearily. "When the geneticist screwed around with our genetic code, they messed with one chromosome. Now we compensate the lack with tryptophan."
Logan vaguely remembered seeing Zane pop a handful of pills in his mouth. "Tryptophan, that's the amino acid found in milk and turkey, right? They used to sell that as a homeopathic treatment for neurological conditions…" Logan nodded. "I guess that makes sense."
Impressed, Syl cocked her head. "We take that on a daily basis, but still once or twice a year, we'll get hit with a really bad seizure, like you saw today. They are severe enough that we have to take an injection of something called tryptoephire; it not only suppresses the seizure with a high concentrated dose of tryptophan, it has a small dosage of epinephrine to keep us from going to a coma, basically."
"That explains the sleeping." Logan said halfway to himself.
Syl nodded. "You know how milk makes you tired? Times that by about twenty with this stuff. Max is going to be out for a good two or three days at least."
Logan pondered this a moment. "Do all of you have seizures?"
"I don't, or at least, I haven't had one for a long time. Zack has very few, and they are very mild anyway. Krit and Tinga's are more severe, but Max's are more often, if slightly milder." It was hard for Logan to imagine anyone having a worse seizure than what he has seen that afternoon.
He had tons more questions, and he fully intended to have each and everyone answered, but the shrill of the phone on Max's desk made them both jump. Syl walked over to the desk warily, grabbing the phone as she checked the caller ID. Logan's eyes widened at the stream of profanity that came from her mouth.
"Zack!" She yelled, "Its Lydecker. I think he knows something's up."
The phone rang for a third time just as Zack ran back into the room. Before Syl even realized what he was doing, Logan grabbed the cordless phone on the desk behind him and stabbed it on with his index finger. Any protest Syl or Zack might have made was cut off with the flick of his wrist. "Hello?" He said calmly, sounding ten times more confident than he really felt.
"Where the hell is Zack and Max? Is Syl there too?" Lydecker's annoyance was clear. "And why the hell are you answering their phone?"
"Max is here." It was obvious, even without the move of a single muscle that Zack and Syl were now in defensive stances, ready to pounce in a millisecond, should Logan screw this up. He'd better make it good then. "But I don't have the slightest idea where Syl and Zack are. Last I saw they were camped out somewhere quiet over your way working on computers. As for the phone, Max is packing and she asked me to answer it for her."
Lydecker paused a moment. "Packing? What for?" His voice was stone cold with suspicion.
"Well, we were coming back to base to get this cleared by you, but I think you saved us the trip." Logan began pacing back and forth across the room, scratching the back of his head with one hand as he pulled a story out of the top of his head. "I am having trouble convincing the shareholders of what I am trying to do with this article, so I asked Max to come with me to talk to them and demonstrate some things that I can't explain to them without her help."
"And she agreed to this?" The way Max had referred to Cale as 'the fucking reporter', it was hard to believe that she would do a favor for him. "Are you blackmailing her or something?"
Logan let out a forced clip of laughter. "No, I just told her she could eat where ever she wanted when ever she wanted."
Syl smiled briefly. He was good. Very good.
"I wanted to have one of the commanding officers," Logan continued, "but I figured that you rather have your first in command close to base, so I thought you'd be more apt to letting Max go for a week rather than Zack."
"A week? It's going to take that long?"
"It could be before that." Depending on when the hell Max decides to wake up. "I am really not sure at this point."
When Logan hung up the phone they all let out a breath they hadn't known they'd been holding. His voice was that eerie calm again. "I just bought her a week to get better. If she isn't up and back to normal by then, I think she's in the wrong line of work."
Logan really wasn't in the mood to suffer through another bumbling gratitude speech, threat, or anything else for that matter from an X5 today, so he sat back down warily. "I think you guys better get back to base before they realize your gone." Syl nodded, understanding impeccably. "I'll be in the car." She said in a low voice before stepping out of the room.
"You staying here?" Zack asked, almost as if it were a challenge for him to say 'no.'
"I'm not going anywhere." Logan said evenly.
Zack dropped the bottle of pills he'd carried in the room with him on the dresser. "If Max wakes up, she might or she might not, I have no idea, can you try and shove some of those down her throat, and some food if you can. It'll help her get over the tryptoephire quicker."
"Will do." Logan muttered as he leaned back in his chair, idly wondering if he'd just committed his first felony.
AN: Okay, this is the official end of the expositionary bullsh**. May the shipper goodness begin.
Oh, also, I've been forgetting to thank my wonderful beta's; Cat, Anna, and Karen, for helping me so much and god knows I need a lot of it. I also want to thank everone for all the feedback I've been getting. I've replied to as many as I felt needed one, like if you ask a question or something, so if you do have questions, go ahead a voice them and I'll be sure to write you back. Thanks again!
