By Valjean
A Little Chat
"Don't worry," Lydecker said. "They won't be putting you in with the general prison population." He smiled humorlessly. "I told Chief Wyatt it would be like letting a shark loose in a goldfish tank. Give you five minutes alone with his inmates and there wouldn't be anything left of them except a bloody mess on the floor."
"That's not exactly what I was worried about," Alec said carefully. He'd been taken to an isolation cell somewhere in the basement of the building, and his only thoughts right now were of escape. He didn't want Max worrying about him or trying to mount some kind of insane rescue.
"I've also been trying to convince Donahue that it was a mistake to take you hostage. That my kids would sacrifice one of their own without a second thought if they had to. Max won't be coming back for you. Isn't that right?"
"Right," Alec said, still keeping careful control of his tongue.
"494, why don't I believe you?"
"I dunno, Lydecker.You tell me?"
"Because I'm betting you've fallen under 452's spell. I've seen her effect on my soldiers before. She elicits a loyalty way beyond anything Manticore could ever have accomplished. 599 loved her, and nothing I did to him could persuade him to give her up -- not torture, not drugs, not tele-coercion. I hear that, in the end, he died for her. I have a feeling you would too."
"599?" Alec said. Then he remembered. "Zack."
Lydecker nodded.
I knew he didn't feel brotherly about Max.
"One thing wrong with your theory, Lydecker," Alec said. "I don't love her, and she doesn't give a rat's ass about me. Hell, we can hardly stand each other. Fact is, I tried to kill her not so long ago. Max won't be comin' back for me."
"Max's reasons for rescuing you don't really matter," Lydecker said. "She will try to get you out of here. I know her too well to doubt that. What's important is that she not get herself killed in the attempt. She's far too valuable to risk. Which is why I'm going help you escape before she comes for you."
"You're gonna spring me?" Alec said, not quite believing what he was hearing.
"And in return I expect your cooperation in convincing Max to bring the mutants back into Manticore."
"No one convinces Max of anything," Alec said. "Especially me."
"I'm not so certain about that. But in any case, I'm not going to let Wyatt put you on trial or Donahue get his hands on you. There's already talk about sending you off to some research facility in Washington for study. You're the first live X5 they've captured. My kids have a much higher purpose than being lab rats."
"Seems to me that's exactly what we've always been to you, Lydecker -- lab rats."
Lydecker smiled again, shaking his head. "Unbelievable. It's absolutely unbelievable how well you've adapted to the outside world, able to talk to your superior officer in such a disrespectful, flippant manner. All those years of lessons, indoctrination--"
"You mean brainwashing," Alec said evenly.
"Brainwashing," Lydecker conceded. "We really did make a mistake with you X5's. We made you too strong, independent, and stubborn. Hell, we created a race of beings we can't control no matter how many mental chains we throw around your minds. Max and her fellow escapees I can understand, they've had years of freedom and they got away while very young and still impressionable. But you, 494 ... you're pure Manticore, yet in under a year you've managed to shake off all of your training."
"Not all of it," Alec said with a smirk. "Just the parts of it that made me a robot."
"You were a good soldier, 494. Certainly you remember the missions you went on for me. I always enjoyed using you on my teams. You might not have been the most vicious fighter, but you somehow always managed to get the job done.
"But I also remember you, Lydecker," Alec said. "You weren't too pleased with me after Cairo. I spent four days in that metal hell box in the Egyptian sun because you didn't like the way I covered for one of my team."
"Your mistake wasn't helping your fellow X5," Lydecker said. "That's not what I punished you for. You were punished for getting caught at it. You came out of it as cocky as ever though," he said with a grin. He looked at his notes again. "You were a failure as a solo assassin. I didn't realize that." He read more. "The Berrisford mission essentially ended your career." He looked up at Alec, eyebrows raised in surprise. "You were put through re-indoctrination."
"Yeah," Alec said. "Guess it didn't take."
"You were only given the level two treatment. The Committee didn't want to risk brain damage. They saw you as a valuable asset and thought you were salvageable. I gather you eventually remembered everything anyway, in spite of their efforts.?"
"Everything," Alec said levelly.
"Meaning Rachel?" Lydecker said, consulting his notes again. "The girl you fell in love with then killed."
Alec didn't deny that.
"You know there are deeper levels of re-indoctrination? For example, we could make you forget this entire past year, forget all about Max and your months of freedom. We could reset your brain so you'd be a good Manticore soldier again. Not without a great deal of pain and some brain damage of course, but technically ... we've done it before to rogue X5's."
"I'd like to see you try," Alec said. But actually, he wouldn't. Lydecker's words put a lump of fear in his throat. They'd made him forget about Rachel for a long time. What if they really could make him forget Max and Joshua ... make him forget who he really was ... make him forget Alec?
"But our scientists are scattered all over the world," Lydecker said. "And there is no Manticore. So you can go on loving her, for now. I won't try to stop you."
Yeah, you'll just try to use it to your advantage.
"Max has my wife's eyes, you know."
Alec shot Lydecker an incredulous look.
"I donated my wife's DNA to Manticore. They used the coding for her eye shape and color when they created Max." He consulted the database again and looked more closely at Alec.
"Most of your gene base came from Sandeman, like all the rest of the mutants. But your hazel-green eyes came from your genetic mother. I remember. It was one of the more striking features that we decided to keep in the gene base even though it was an accident. They're natural, not DNA spliced."
"My mother?"
"All of you had mothers. You just don't know who they are. They were the original egg donors. Then, of course, there are the surrogates, who could also be considered your mothers."
Alec knew none of this should matter to him, and he was getting rather suspicious as to why Lydecker seemed so chatty. But as long as the man was giving out information ...
"What about Ben?" Alec asked. "He went nuts. Is there anything in that little database about him? Can you tell me what happened?"
Lydecker didn't even have to consult his notes. "Ben," he said, sadly shaking his head. "My 493. He was schizophrenic."
"And I could be, too?"
Lydecker cocked an eyebrow at him. "Worries you a bit, does it? Well, there's always the possibility, but it's not likely. You'd be showing some symptoms by now and psi-ops are pretty thorough. Six months evaluation would have turned up the illness."
"Illness? I thought it was hereditary."
"Only the tendency to contract the disease. It was an oversight that the predisposition wasn't eliminated in your DNA in the lab before your birth. They think a virus triggers it -- alters brain chemistry. Ben could have been treated with drugs, could have led a fairly normal life once his condition was under control, but of course he never had that chance. Someone broke his neck before we could get to him and help him. You haven't been hearing annoying little voices in your head have you?"
"Just yours. So, I'm probably all right?"
"Probably," was all Lydecker would say. He regarded Alec for a long moment.
"Are we through?"
"That depends. Will you back me up with Max, tell her to recommend all of the mutants stand down and return to the new Manticore?"
"Sure," Alec said. "Why not."
Lydecker smiled again. "I'd ask for your word, but then that wouldn't mean anything, would it?"
"What do you think?"
"In which case I'll just have take my chances with you. Either way, Donahue and Wyatt aren't going to be keeping one of my kids."
"Do you have a plan for getting out of here?" Alec asked.
"Not yet. How about you? Has that enhanced brain of yours come up with an escape scenario?"
"Yeah, I think it has. Call the guard."