29. Shock Treatment
Alec was on an examining table, thrashing and raving. The tranquilizer dart had already cycled through his system."You have to restrain him, now!" barked Logan, hitting him with a stun baton. Alec convulsed, moaning. He took a swipe at Logan, so Logan shocked him again, taking perverse pleasure in the thought of 500,000 volts crashing through Alec's CNS.
Doctor Carr was horrified. "Stop that this instant!" he said. "I can't have you abusing my patient!"
"Sam," Logan grunted. "You're just not getting it." He shocked Alec again.
"He doesn't know what's going on!" Sam yelled. "He thinks we're attacking him!"
"You know what?" Logan said. "I am attacking him!"
"Okay, stop that! Calm down. Look, he's photosensitive," Sam said, like that explained everything. He turned out the light over the exam bed. Alec stopped struggling. He lay still. His chest was heaving, and tears were dripping out of his eyes.
"Sensory overload," said Sam. He put a hand on Alec's chest.
"Prick," said Logan.
"Just stop," said Sam. "He's sick. It's not his fault."
"Tell that to Max," said Logan. "He's dangerous."
Alec lunged, as fast as a whiplash, and caught the doctor by the windpipe. He lifted Sam, and the doctor's feet left the floor. Logan shocked Alec, and because they were in contact, Sam as well. Alec seized, groaning, and dropped the doctor. Sam fell to the floor in an untidy heap.
"Now do you get it?" Logan asked.
Max and Logan sat side by side on a couch in the waiting room. She had been tended to, and had her arm in a sling. She was wearing a faded, rose-colored shift one of the nurses had scrounged from the lost and found. She had a threadbare navy cardigan of the same provenance draped over her shoulders. On her feet were a pair of white canvas running shoes that were more or less her size. She was tired, physically and spiritually.
She looked at the fine line of Logan's cheek, the faint golden stubble. He was so close, and she couldn't touch him. In her fatigue, sad little thoughts were floating around her brain like spirit puffs ghosting through a cemetery. She was thinking of Alec, trained by Manticore as a dealer of death. Like her brother Ben, he had begged her for release. She was thinking of Logan, her hamstrung suitor, closer than a minute, and farther away than the moon.
The hospital was quiet at this hour of the morning. Apart from one nurse, who was poking around behind the nursing station, Logan and Max were the only people there. Max stuck out her feet, looking at the dumb white running shoes. There was another thing she was thinking. She was never going to be able to touch Logan. She was diseased, poisonous and unclean. She had come very close to sending Logan to his maker, and she was petrified. The idea of Logan dying was devastating. She couldn't look at it, so she closed her eyes. Did she have to stay away from him? She wouldn't be able to bear causing his death.
"Was anything in Eva's notes true?" she asked him. "Anything at all?"
"I don't know," Logan said. "I don't think so. I think White destroyed her research."
"What about the other name?" she asked. "What was it? Sandoval?"
"I don't know." He sighed. "Maybe it was a dead end. Maybe he had a whole other trap set up for you, just in case. He got lucky, with some of the stuff that happened."
"I was dumb," she said bleakly. "Just plain dumb. It can't happen again."
"Frankie Sullivan hired a security expert to booby-trap his valuables," Logan was explaining. "With a neurotoxin, as it turns out. Can you believe it? I put it together when I heard on the radio that they'd located his wife. They were thinking she'd been kidnaped."
"Oh," said Max.
"By you," said Logan.
"Uh-oh," said Max.
"Well, you did break into the guy's house," said Logan. "Anyhow, they don't know who you are."
"Nice to know we did something right," said Max.
"She was wandering around the city, apparently having a breakdown. She was hallucinating."
"It was the gas?" asked Max.
"Frankie got a dose too," said Logan. "He was out of it. So was the so-called security expert. Get this, he dreamed up the dog-man, and made that report to the police. It was all delusion."
"Oh, man," said Max.
"There was a leak in the system, and it was seeping all over the mansion. Who knows who else was exposed?"
"So I breathed it too," said Max.
"But it didn't hurt you," he said.
"I don't get it," said Max.
"You didn't get sprayed in the face," said Logan, shrugging. "Anyhow, White saw an opportunity with that police report, and he took it."
Max sighed.
"So Alec got a snoot full, and it knocked him silly," said Logan. "It explains his behavior."
"Maybe," said Max, doubtful. Only time would tell.
"The others are really, really, sick," said Logan, "but I think we've established just how strong Alec is." He looked at her. Max's mouth was swollen and sore, and as he watched she touched the cut on her lip, wincing. She seemed so small. He remembered Alec carrying her out of White's compound, throwing her over his shoulder like it was nothing. Fervently, Logan wished he could sweep her into his arms, and carry her away. He was having his own thoughts about fortresses and strongholds. He wanted to take Max somewhere quiet and safe, like a castle on an island in the middle of the ocean.
Max said tiredly, "I was finished Logan. I was beat. Up there on the tower. We fought, and I lost."
His breath caught in his throat, and he turned to face her, silent. When Logan had arrived at the top of the tower, Max was flat on her back, and Alec was leaning over her. The first thought he'd had was that Alec had forced himself on her. He was terribly afraid that she had been raped, and hadn't known how to ask. On their way down the stairs, as he dragged Alec by the ankles, and Alec's arms splayed out and his head thumped on the concrete, Logan had tried to form the question. He started to speak, and she'd cut him off, saying sharply, "No."
But he hadn't known if she meant no she hadn't been raped, or no--she didn't want to talk about it. They had picked their way down the stairs in miserable silence.
Now she said, "He didn't hurt me--not like you're thinking."
Logan let out his breath, and every muscle in his body relaxed.
"He wanted me to kill him," she said wonderingly, unaware that beside her Logan was struggling with his composure. "You heard him say that, didn't you?"
"Yeah. But he's sick, Max. He'll get better." He was prepared to be magnanimous, now he knew Alec hadn't sexually assaulted her.
"I lost," she said again. "He beat me."
"You were hurt Max," he said. "And even at that, you fought him to a standstill. It was hardly a fair fight. He was hypo-manic, and you had been tortured and shot."
She shifted uncomfortably. "None of the fights are fair," she said. There was something she wanted to explain, that she had to win all the fights, all the time, but she was just too tired, so instead she said: "If he hadn't quit when he did, there was no way I could have stopped him."
"Max," said Logan, "He did stop. It's over now. You're going to be okay, and that's all that matters to me." He reached into his coat pocket. "Hey, look what I got," he said, deliberately changing the subject. He pulled out a brown paper sack.
"What is it?" asked Max. Logan rolled down the lip of the bag, and showed her the bottle.
She laughed. "Where did you get that?"
"From a guy in the street, while they were fixing up your arm." He didn't tell her that last night, after Sam had picked himself up and dusted himself off, he had worked up a treatment plan for Alec. He had gotten Alec settled. Then he had thrown Logan out of the hospital, threatening to call security. Logan had wandered the streets around Harbor Lights, muttering and swearing, thinking dark thoughts about rape and retribution, and the inefficacy of justice when all parties involved were genetic experiments on the lam from the law.
"You bought it in the street?" she said. "You'll go blind."
"Live a little," he said laughing. "We're going to have a smart cocktail, or two. We earned it. Anyhow, the bottle has a factory seal." He picked at the neck of the bottle, but couldn't crack the seal. "Here, open that, would you?" He passed it to her. She tucked the bottle into her sling, and twisted off the cap with her good hand. She handed it back to him. "Do you want a sip?" he asked.
"Are you gonna drink out of that?" she said.
"Oh, right," he said, wrinkling his brow. "Sit tight." He got up, and left the waiting room.
Max sat by herself, thinking about nothing. The space between her ears was only powdery cobwebs. At one point she looked up and by accident caught the eye of the nurse. He was a tattooed, brawny guy with a long, stringy ponytail. He smiled at her and winked. She looked down at her shoes.
Logan came back, and handed her a heavy mug. The glaze was cracked all over, and on the front it said: "Happiness is a warm speculum."
"Ew," she said, reading the slogan. He poured out a couple of fingers for her. She took a sip, and choked. "Smooth," she said, smiling at him.
The nurse stood at his station and called out, "Hey, you can't drink alcohol, not in here."
Logan sighed. The nurse came over to the waiting area. He stood in front of them, looking stern. "Howdy," said Logan.
"I'm sorry, guys," the nurse said. "I'm going to have to confiscate your mickey."
"How about if you just confiscate this much," Logan said, indicating a couple of centimeters with his thumb and forefinger.
"I'm on duty," said the nurse. "It's first thing in the morning." He looked over his shoulder, shrugged, and looked down at Logan. "Make it a double, and you've got yourself a deal."
"Excellent," said Logan.
The nurse went to his desk, and came back with his coffee mug. "Hit me," he said.
"Pleasure doing business with you," said Logan.
Max drank her smart cocktail, and for a while she and Logan sat in companionable silence. Then she said, "Give me money. I'm hungry."
"There's nothing open yet," Logan replied.
"I'll make a raid on the vending machines. Want something?"
"Naw," said Logan. "Let's just get out of here. I'll cook something for you. We can't do anything else today, anyway."
They stood and headed for the door, walking side by side. The running shoes made sucking noises as she walked, because she wasn't wearing socks.
"I just can't buy that one little whiff of gas would put Alec in such a tailspin," Max said suddenly. She lowered her voice as they passed the nursing station. "Manticore made us immune to so many bio-agents."
"Manticore is yesterday's news, Max," Logan replied, equally quietly. "Sadly, science marches on. People are always going to find new and better ways to poison themselves. But, I'll admit, this setup at Frankie Sullivan's really takes the cake. What a bunch of crackpots."
"Well," said Max, as they reached the stairs. "I think the idea was to drop any burglar right in his tracks. I don't think Frankie was planning on handing anybody over to the cops."
"Hmm," said Logan.
"We're going to need some big bucks to cover this treatment," said Max. Sam Carr was flushing Alec's system, and giving him antipsychotics. Alec was more subdued now, and very depressed.
"Yeah," agreed Logan. "Sam is going to need to grease a lot of palms to keep Alec here, and keep everything quiet."
"Oh, dammit," Max sighed. "I guess I know where there are some very expensive shoes we can fence."
"That seems about right." Logan smiled.
"So Frankie's wife was wandering around the city, out of her gourd," said Max. "That's scary."
"Yeah," said Logan. "Frankie was sacked out back at the mansion, and she was just lost. Anything could have happened to her."
"She could have had the good fortune to bump into Alec," she said with a laugh. "Can you imagine?"
"No," said Logan. "And I don't care to. That would be too weird, even for Alec."
To be continued . . .