Thanks for the awesome reviews everybody, I really appreciate it. I've had a sinus infection all week, but this has been at least one bright spot for me. I have a question for the readers out there who watch Buffy too: Anybody noticed anything about the chapter titles?
Blood Lust
Listening to Fear
The wind lashed at her cheeks, stealing her breath and lending a bright pink tint to her cheeks, but Alex barely noticed its bite as she pedaled mechanically down the street. Her mind was racing so fast she passed the address she was supposed to deliver the package to twice; once on the way there and again when she backtracked after realizing she'd gone too far. She barely saw the woman who answered the door and would have forgotten to get a signature if the woman herself hadn't noticed the clipboard and asked about it. There was no room in Alex's brain for such mundane details; she was too busy trying to figure out the mystery that was Max and Alec.
She had been surprised at finding the barcodes on their necks, but not entirely shocked. Life as the Slayer had made it damn near impossible to shock her anymore. And after her dream the previous night, a part of her had known something was going to happen concerning Max and Alec. She just hadn't expected this. Hell, she didn't know what she'd expected.
After she'd seen the barcode on Alec's neck, she had stood frozen for a few minutes before Normal had noticed that one of his employees was standing still. His bellow had brought her out of her trance with a jump and within seconds Alex had found herself laden down with multiple packages and a parting "bip bip bip" as Normal practically chased her out the door. As she'd left she'd felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up and she'd looked over her shoulder to find Alec staring at her with an unreadable expression. At that point Normal hadn't had to chase her anymore; she'd pretty much run out.
The initial surprise had worn off after a little while and now, finished with her runs, Alex was pretty certain she knew what was going on. And all she could say was that it was amazing Sketchy was actually right for once.
On her lunch break she had stopped by a newsstand and picked up a local tabloid paper with the words MUTANT THREAT printed across the front. Despite what she'd said to Sketchy earlier about the 'bullshit' the tabloids printed, she knew from personal experience that they were more often closer to the truth than all the well-respected newspapers put together. Alex had always wondered whether each tabloid employed a spy in the demon underworld; their information about 'sludge monsters', etc. was a little too accurate to be complete conjecture. And after seeing the tattoos on her friends' necks this morning, Alex was fairly certain the tabloids were onto something real with the transgenic stories they were running.
She'd scanned the paper thoroughly, skipping over the sensational parts and concentrating on the bare facts she could pick out, such as the fact that transgenics were purported to have barcodes tattooed somewhere on their bodies. The article was mainly concerned with the more monstrous looking mutants, but after a long ramble about a reported half-man half-dog creature, the article did mention the rumor that there were normal looking transgenics as well.
Alex could also recall at least two Eyes Only broadcasts she'd seen about transgenics and something called Manticore. From her studies, Alex knew this to be a vicious man-eating monster with Eastern origins, but she doubted that was the Manticore in question. She had briefly wondered why Eyes Only had apparently decided to champion the transgenic cause to the people of Seattle, but Alex had a certain respect for the man. While she didn't know how much good he actually accomplished, at least someone was trying to fight the corruption that had spread like a plague after the Pulse.
Which led to the basic question of good and evil. The articles and general feelings among those people who believed in transgenics were that they were monsters, sub-humans, but Alex had experience with monsters. She'd seen things that were forever burned into her mind, come across creatures that she never could have dreamed up in her worst nightmares. She knew evil, knew the way it thought, the way it felt. And she knew Max and Alec. They did not feel like evil.
Sure, Alec affected her with his mere presence and even Max had occasionally popped up on her 'spider-sense' radar. The way they sometimes moved, their body language, would occasionally betray them as something beyond ordinary, but they were so practiced at blending in that they rarely slipped up, so Alex had always written her observations off as mistakes. But now she realized that she had sensed something different about them. But that was all. Just something different. Not evil, not unnatural, just different. And it was her instinct more than any information she'd gathered from the tabloids and Eyes Only that told her to leave Max and Alec in peace.
She didn't know a lot about where transgenics had come from, or what they were exactly, but she was smart enough to realize that they were now hiding. Rumors had them running from the government, but Alex had never really cared for authority figures. They were too often wrong to be trusted. So she had no qualms about letting her friends stay hidden from the law. In fact, she decided to not even reveal to them that she knew their secret. She didn't know how they would react to her knowledge and she didn't want to scare them off, or worse, scare them into attacking. Not that she'd blame them for assuming the worst of her. Even people as sweetly naïve as Sketchy were ready to accept the idea that transgenics were evil, but she certainly wasn't going to lay down and let them take her out if they perceived her to be a threat to their safety. So she would remain silent and add one more secret to the pile she carried around inside of her.
Alex felt tension she hadn't even noticed start to drain from her body once she came to a decision. While she often deliberated back and forth on issues, once she made a firm decision a sense of calm always came over her. She had committed herself to a course of action and all there was left to do was see what decision it would lead her to next.
Glancing down at her watch, Alex was surprised to see it was just before seven. She turned her bike around and began heading back to Jam Pony, stopping impatiently as a moving truck pulled out across the road in front of her, effectively blocking off all traffic for a minute. Glancing around she noticed two sector cops talking a little bit away, decked out in the full riot gear that was now standard issue for every officer in the big cities. It wasn't the cops themselves that stopped her from moving on as the truck finished turning, but the subject of their conversation.
"-Finally found that kid we've been lookin' for, over in a dumpster in sector nine," one officer was saying to his co-worker.
"Yeah? The one that went missing at that club?" his companion asked, sipping a coffee.
" 'One' of the ones that have gone missing at a club," the first officer replied grimly. "There's been a real rise in disappearances in sector seven over the past few months. All those kids at those clubs, don't pay attention to who they're with or what's going on until it's too late."
"Well, at least one set of parents will get some sort of peace from being able to set up a proper tombstone instead of putting up missing posters for the rest of their lives," the second cop shrugged, hardened to the idea of murdered kids.
"Yeah," the first cop answered, beginning to walk off out of hearing range, "at least they get to bury the corpse."
As they moved away Alex slowly started biking again, turning their conversation over in her mind. There was nothing unusual about what they'd said; murders and disappearances were common occurrences in Seattle. Yet while she'd been eavesdropping her spider sense had been on red alert. She couldn't say why, but Alex was certain that the missing club hoppers had something to do with why she was in Seattle.
Mouth set in a grim line, Alex made her way to the nearest phone booth to call Brian and get him working on this new lead. Finally they had something to work with. And she might finally have something to kill.
* * * *
Alec whistled to himself as he walked over to the lockers after dropping off the last of his signatures with Normal. He had no idea what the hell the song was called, but it had been stuck in his head all day and he grimaced every time he caught himself whistling it out loud.
Sketchy and Alex were no where in sight, but Max and Original Cindy were standing close together by the lockers, Max shaking her head reluctantly as O.C. spoke to her quietly while emphatically gesturing with her hands. They both looked like they were concerned about something.
"Ladies," he said, coming up to them. "Everything alright?"
"Yeah," Max answered just as O.C. gave a flat, "No."
Alec raised his eyebrows at them and the two girls glanced at each other, before Max sighed and conceded with a, "Maybe not."
"Maybe?" he said confused and leaned in closer. "What's going on?"
"That's the thing," Max replied quietly, "we're not sure."
"Okay, I know you girls like to dance around issues, but this is getting ridiculous," Alec said, exasperated. "What are you talking about?"
"Your girl Alex," O.C. replied frankly.
Alec looked at her in surprise, "Alex? Why, something wrong?"
Original Cindy nodded, but Max interjected, "We don't know for sure."
O.C. rolled her eyes at her. "Girly girl's got a bruise coverin' her entire torso and you're not sure somethin's up?" She turned back to Alec, who now shared their concerned look. "Alex came in here this mornin' wit' her entire left side all black and blue, like somebody gave her a good kick in the stomach. Then she made up some bullshit story about fallin' outta bed, which I know ain't true cause fallin' two feet don't give you that big a bruise, I don't care what you hit on the way down."
"You think somebody beat her?" Alec asked, directing the question at Max who had more experience than Cindy did in the recognizing wounds department.
"Looked pretty bad," Max admitted. "And it's not the first time I've noticed something. She covers them up pretty well, but I've caught glimpses of bruises and cuts before. Remember when she wore that turtleneck last week?" Alec nodded, recalling how the deep green had highlighted her pale complexion and the clingy fabric had clung to her curves. "Well, I saw her neck when she was changing after work. She had bruises all over it. As if someone had choked her."
Alec stared at Max in confusion. "Someone tried to choke her and you're 'not sure' if something's wrong?" he asked, derision seeping into his voice.
Max instantly flared up in anger, "Look, lover boy, we don't know what's going on with her, okay? We don't know who's doing this to her, if she's involved in something shady or if she just likes to play rough after lights out. So I'm sorry if I don't immediately assume she's a damsel in distress waiting for you to sweep her off her feet!"
Alec glared at her for a minute, then decided to let the argument slide. "Fine. We don't know what's going on. Let's ask her."
O.C. shook her head, "N'huh. No way. If something is goin' down wit' her, she hasn't gone lookin' for help, which means that if we just butt into her business, she'll probably freak out and deny it all." Max nodded in agreement. She knew the kind of crazy shit people could do when they felt like they were backed into a corner.
"So what, we just sit around and do nothing?" Alec asked shortly, wanting to take some action. Max accused him of being a selfish prick, and at times he was, but Alec deeply cherished the few friends he's managed to make, though he would never say it out loud. The idea that one of them was in trouble made him anxious to fix the problem for them. Which often got him into some sticky situations since Max was so prone to finding danger, but that was the price he paid for deciding to stick around Seattle.
"What about that friend of hers, Brian?" Max asked, looking between O.C. and Alec.
O.C. shrugged, "What about him, boo?"
Max cocked her head slightly. "He doesn't come out very often, but he's always calling Alex, telling her to come home or meet him somewhere." She shrugged, "It's not much, but it seems kind of controlling to me."
"You think Brian is hittin' our girly girl?" O.C. asked, concern furrowing her brow.
"Dunno," Max replied. "But it would explain why she hasn't said anything about being in trouble. I mean, they've been moving around together for so long, she could be afraid of losing him, even if he is hitting her."
O.C. nodded slowly, "I've seen some sistahs put up wit' some fucked up shit all because they didn't think they had anywhere else to go."
"Yeah," Max said softly, thinking. "There's only one way we can be sure without asking her." She shared a knowing look with Alec. "Next time she gets a call from him at Crash and has to blaze, we should follow her, see what's going on."
"What do we do after that? If he's hitting her, then what?" O.C. asked.
Alec looked at her, his face devoid of emotion. His eyes were no longer those of a carefree bike messenger, but those of a hardened soldier. "Then we make sure he'll never be able to hit her again."
Next chapter: "Beauty and the Beasts" Alec and Max follow Alex when she goes hunting.
Blood Lust
Listening to Fear
The wind lashed at her cheeks, stealing her breath and lending a bright pink tint to her cheeks, but Alex barely noticed its bite as she pedaled mechanically down the street. Her mind was racing so fast she passed the address she was supposed to deliver the package to twice; once on the way there and again when she backtracked after realizing she'd gone too far. She barely saw the woman who answered the door and would have forgotten to get a signature if the woman herself hadn't noticed the clipboard and asked about it. There was no room in Alex's brain for such mundane details; she was too busy trying to figure out the mystery that was Max and Alec.
She had been surprised at finding the barcodes on their necks, but not entirely shocked. Life as the Slayer had made it damn near impossible to shock her anymore. And after her dream the previous night, a part of her had known something was going to happen concerning Max and Alec. She just hadn't expected this. Hell, she didn't know what she'd expected.
After she'd seen the barcode on Alec's neck, she had stood frozen for a few minutes before Normal had noticed that one of his employees was standing still. His bellow had brought her out of her trance with a jump and within seconds Alex had found herself laden down with multiple packages and a parting "bip bip bip" as Normal practically chased her out the door. As she'd left she'd felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up and she'd looked over her shoulder to find Alec staring at her with an unreadable expression. At that point Normal hadn't had to chase her anymore; she'd pretty much run out.
The initial surprise had worn off after a little while and now, finished with her runs, Alex was pretty certain she knew what was going on. And all she could say was that it was amazing Sketchy was actually right for once.
On her lunch break she had stopped by a newsstand and picked up a local tabloid paper with the words MUTANT THREAT printed across the front. Despite what she'd said to Sketchy earlier about the 'bullshit' the tabloids printed, she knew from personal experience that they were more often closer to the truth than all the well-respected newspapers put together. Alex had always wondered whether each tabloid employed a spy in the demon underworld; their information about 'sludge monsters', etc. was a little too accurate to be complete conjecture. And after seeing the tattoos on her friends' necks this morning, Alex was fairly certain the tabloids were onto something real with the transgenic stories they were running.
She'd scanned the paper thoroughly, skipping over the sensational parts and concentrating on the bare facts she could pick out, such as the fact that transgenics were purported to have barcodes tattooed somewhere on their bodies. The article was mainly concerned with the more monstrous looking mutants, but after a long ramble about a reported half-man half-dog creature, the article did mention the rumor that there were normal looking transgenics as well.
Alex could also recall at least two Eyes Only broadcasts she'd seen about transgenics and something called Manticore. From her studies, Alex knew this to be a vicious man-eating monster with Eastern origins, but she doubted that was the Manticore in question. She had briefly wondered why Eyes Only had apparently decided to champion the transgenic cause to the people of Seattle, but Alex had a certain respect for the man. While she didn't know how much good he actually accomplished, at least someone was trying to fight the corruption that had spread like a plague after the Pulse.
Which led to the basic question of good and evil. The articles and general feelings among those people who believed in transgenics were that they were monsters, sub-humans, but Alex had experience with monsters. She'd seen things that were forever burned into her mind, come across creatures that she never could have dreamed up in her worst nightmares. She knew evil, knew the way it thought, the way it felt. And she knew Max and Alec. They did not feel like evil.
Sure, Alec affected her with his mere presence and even Max had occasionally popped up on her 'spider-sense' radar. The way they sometimes moved, their body language, would occasionally betray them as something beyond ordinary, but they were so practiced at blending in that they rarely slipped up, so Alex had always written her observations off as mistakes. But now she realized that she had sensed something different about them. But that was all. Just something different. Not evil, not unnatural, just different. And it was her instinct more than any information she'd gathered from the tabloids and Eyes Only that told her to leave Max and Alec in peace.
She didn't know a lot about where transgenics had come from, or what they were exactly, but she was smart enough to realize that they were now hiding. Rumors had them running from the government, but Alex had never really cared for authority figures. They were too often wrong to be trusted. So she had no qualms about letting her friends stay hidden from the law. In fact, she decided to not even reveal to them that she knew their secret. She didn't know how they would react to her knowledge and she didn't want to scare them off, or worse, scare them into attacking. Not that she'd blame them for assuming the worst of her. Even people as sweetly naïve as Sketchy were ready to accept the idea that transgenics were evil, but she certainly wasn't going to lay down and let them take her out if they perceived her to be a threat to their safety. So she would remain silent and add one more secret to the pile she carried around inside of her.
Alex felt tension she hadn't even noticed start to drain from her body once she came to a decision. While she often deliberated back and forth on issues, once she made a firm decision a sense of calm always came over her. She had committed herself to a course of action and all there was left to do was see what decision it would lead her to next.
Glancing down at her watch, Alex was surprised to see it was just before seven. She turned her bike around and began heading back to Jam Pony, stopping impatiently as a moving truck pulled out across the road in front of her, effectively blocking off all traffic for a minute. Glancing around she noticed two sector cops talking a little bit away, decked out in the full riot gear that was now standard issue for every officer in the big cities. It wasn't the cops themselves that stopped her from moving on as the truck finished turning, but the subject of their conversation.
"-Finally found that kid we've been lookin' for, over in a dumpster in sector nine," one officer was saying to his co-worker.
"Yeah? The one that went missing at that club?" his companion asked, sipping a coffee.
" 'One' of the ones that have gone missing at a club," the first officer replied grimly. "There's been a real rise in disappearances in sector seven over the past few months. All those kids at those clubs, don't pay attention to who they're with or what's going on until it's too late."
"Well, at least one set of parents will get some sort of peace from being able to set up a proper tombstone instead of putting up missing posters for the rest of their lives," the second cop shrugged, hardened to the idea of murdered kids.
"Yeah," the first cop answered, beginning to walk off out of hearing range, "at least they get to bury the corpse."
As they moved away Alex slowly started biking again, turning their conversation over in her mind. There was nothing unusual about what they'd said; murders and disappearances were common occurrences in Seattle. Yet while she'd been eavesdropping her spider sense had been on red alert. She couldn't say why, but Alex was certain that the missing club hoppers had something to do with why she was in Seattle.
Mouth set in a grim line, Alex made her way to the nearest phone booth to call Brian and get him working on this new lead. Finally they had something to work with. And she might finally have something to kill.
* * * *
Alec whistled to himself as he walked over to the lockers after dropping off the last of his signatures with Normal. He had no idea what the hell the song was called, but it had been stuck in his head all day and he grimaced every time he caught himself whistling it out loud.
Sketchy and Alex were no where in sight, but Max and Original Cindy were standing close together by the lockers, Max shaking her head reluctantly as O.C. spoke to her quietly while emphatically gesturing with her hands. They both looked like they were concerned about something.
"Ladies," he said, coming up to them. "Everything alright?"
"Yeah," Max answered just as O.C. gave a flat, "No."
Alec raised his eyebrows at them and the two girls glanced at each other, before Max sighed and conceded with a, "Maybe not."
"Maybe?" he said confused and leaned in closer. "What's going on?"
"That's the thing," Max replied quietly, "we're not sure."
"Okay, I know you girls like to dance around issues, but this is getting ridiculous," Alec said, exasperated. "What are you talking about?"
"Your girl Alex," O.C. replied frankly.
Alec looked at her in surprise, "Alex? Why, something wrong?"
Original Cindy nodded, but Max interjected, "We don't know for sure."
O.C. rolled her eyes at her. "Girly girl's got a bruise coverin' her entire torso and you're not sure somethin's up?" She turned back to Alec, who now shared their concerned look. "Alex came in here this mornin' wit' her entire left side all black and blue, like somebody gave her a good kick in the stomach. Then she made up some bullshit story about fallin' outta bed, which I know ain't true cause fallin' two feet don't give you that big a bruise, I don't care what you hit on the way down."
"You think somebody beat her?" Alec asked, directing the question at Max who had more experience than Cindy did in the recognizing wounds department.
"Looked pretty bad," Max admitted. "And it's not the first time I've noticed something. She covers them up pretty well, but I've caught glimpses of bruises and cuts before. Remember when she wore that turtleneck last week?" Alec nodded, recalling how the deep green had highlighted her pale complexion and the clingy fabric had clung to her curves. "Well, I saw her neck when she was changing after work. She had bruises all over it. As if someone had choked her."
Alec stared at Max in confusion. "Someone tried to choke her and you're 'not sure' if something's wrong?" he asked, derision seeping into his voice.
Max instantly flared up in anger, "Look, lover boy, we don't know what's going on with her, okay? We don't know who's doing this to her, if she's involved in something shady or if she just likes to play rough after lights out. So I'm sorry if I don't immediately assume she's a damsel in distress waiting for you to sweep her off her feet!"
Alec glared at her for a minute, then decided to let the argument slide. "Fine. We don't know what's going on. Let's ask her."
O.C. shook her head, "N'huh. No way. If something is goin' down wit' her, she hasn't gone lookin' for help, which means that if we just butt into her business, she'll probably freak out and deny it all." Max nodded in agreement. She knew the kind of crazy shit people could do when they felt like they were backed into a corner.
"So what, we just sit around and do nothing?" Alec asked shortly, wanting to take some action. Max accused him of being a selfish prick, and at times he was, but Alec deeply cherished the few friends he's managed to make, though he would never say it out loud. The idea that one of them was in trouble made him anxious to fix the problem for them. Which often got him into some sticky situations since Max was so prone to finding danger, but that was the price he paid for deciding to stick around Seattle.
"What about that friend of hers, Brian?" Max asked, looking between O.C. and Alec.
O.C. shrugged, "What about him, boo?"
Max cocked her head slightly. "He doesn't come out very often, but he's always calling Alex, telling her to come home or meet him somewhere." She shrugged, "It's not much, but it seems kind of controlling to me."
"You think Brian is hittin' our girly girl?" O.C. asked, concern furrowing her brow.
"Dunno," Max replied. "But it would explain why she hasn't said anything about being in trouble. I mean, they've been moving around together for so long, she could be afraid of losing him, even if he is hitting her."
O.C. nodded slowly, "I've seen some sistahs put up wit' some fucked up shit all because they didn't think they had anywhere else to go."
"Yeah," Max said softly, thinking. "There's only one way we can be sure without asking her." She shared a knowing look with Alec. "Next time she gets a call from him at Crash and has to blaze, we should follow her, see what's going on."
"What do we do after that? If he's hitting her, then what?" O.C. asked.
Alec looked at her, his face devoid of emotion. His eyes were no longer those of a carefree bike messenger, but those of a hardened soldier. "Then we make sure he'll never be able to hit her again."
Next chapter: "Beauty and the Beasts" Alec and Max follow Alex when she goes hunting.
