Thanks for all the feedback so far on this repost! I appreciate all the reviews, even if this is the second time around!

Still working the issue on the B&P story (Trying to decide where exactly to go with it….that is, do I give it a story line rivaling some of my others or do I just make it fluff like I was originally going to. Any suggestions?). Working it steadily, rehashing what I have so far and trying to decide on the direction…SIGH the trials and tribulations of being a writer!

Darwin

Chapter Four: Internment

Present:

Max stopped momentarily and looked up at Logan, whose face was ashen, his eyes wide, the muscles in his jaw stood out, but there was no emotion to be read really anywhere in his features. She desperately wanted to know what he might be thinking at that moment, but found herself afraid to ask, for fear of the answer. Instead she looked back down at the floor and pressed on, wanting the secret out, to bleed the poison from her soul before she exploded from holding it in…

FLASHBACK:

Max floated in and out of consciousness for the next week or so, both for her physical condition and for her mental state. She began to understand what Logan's bouts of depression felt like, as the weight of the world seemed to be resting on her shoulders. Medically she was recovering nicely, but her mental state was tattered, and she was so withdrawn that she felt to be out of her body watching everything that happened to her as if from a distance. She saw the nurses and doctors come and go hearing their conversations as echoes in her mind. She was in such poor shape that when Lydecker returned to check on her she did not even react, not even to blink.

Her eye's slowly moved as she heard his voice, "How is she?" She stared at him with disinterest, as if he was an apparition, a figment of her overtaxed imagination.

"Well… she is well recovered from the miscarriage and her gunshot wounds are completely healed.
But she appears to be suffering from some sort of traumatic shock, she doesn't eat, she hardly drinks. We had to put her back on IV just to keep her systems from shutting down altogether."

Another voice chimed in, one she did not recognize, "Sir, why are we bothering? You know the orders."

"I know the orders," Lydecker repeated, "But why waste the opportunity, we already have her in custody," She heard him shift, "When can we start working with her again? I want her reindoctrinated as soon as possible."

"Physically she is ready now," the doctor said, "But her head isn't anywhere near being ready to take the conditioning."

Max could imagine his lips pursing at the news, imagine because her sight had grayed out again. Inwardly she smiled happy to jab him yet again, but there was also a sense of foreboding, reindoctrination… she did not want to become a soldier again, she would not! She was determined to foil him in any attempt at making her into a mindless killing machine.

"Actually…" She heard Lydecker muss, "The weakness might be to our advantage, it would make it easier for the programming to work. I want her prepped, first thing in the morning I want her started on the program."

"What!" both the doctor and the other man protested loudly.

"Sir," The doctor said, "You might make her into a vegetable if you start her now!"

"We're wasting time and funding," The other man said, disagreeing for a completely different reason, "We already know that success with an X-5 escapee is only about 15%. The board will not allow…"

"Duly noted," He interrupted and she could just guess that he was glaring them into silence, "I will take responsibility for the subject. Have her ready by morning."

With that she heard him storm out of the room. She listened to him leave, feeling the butterflies rise in her stomach, scared beyond reason, hoping that she could live up to the brave words she had bolstered herself with only moments before. She hoped she would be able to resist.

How long had it been now? She had already lost track of the days, weeks, perhaps even months since she had been in Lydecker's hands. She watched as he stormed out yet again from another session gone wrong. She smiled around the gag watching out of the corner of her eyes at his frustration level. She had been right, she could resist his programming, and she would retain her own personality after all.

She had managed to bilk fifteen sessions of steadily increasing intensity and pain, only to come away spitting curses at Lydecker. None of it was sinking in, and Lydecker was beginning to see the futility of even trying to reprogram her. But in his pride and want to be right he continued to try, trying to get a success like Bryn, another soldier recovered from the sentimental emotional mess that he had retrieved from the outside world. Not her, Max was going to stay Max, as long as she lived, and Damn Lydecker to Hell if he didn't like it.

Max waited with eminent patience as she heard the heated argument coming from just beyond the door as if they were standing right next to her.

"The board is furious!" She heard the little rat man say. She had started calling him rat man a while back, for the way he scurried about, for his beady eyes and just the underhanded way that he acted whenever she saw him. She was sure that he worked for someone else as a spy not directly for Lydecker as he tried to appear, "They have now invested four months and forty thousand dollars on your say that she was going to be converted that… she was going to be a valued asset again."

"I don't give a damn about how the board feels," Lydecker replied in a calmer voice, "She will come back to us… eventually."

"And at what cost?"

"What does it matter… except maybe to those penny pinching bastards back at the main office?"

"Those penny pinchers hold your ass in the palm of their hands, they're about ready to fire you outright and put someone else in who is more in line with their way of thinking."

"They don't have anyone else with my level of experience with these kids."

"I don't think they care," there was a silence, "They sent this fax to me this morning," another silence, "They began testing the fetus on arrival and it shows the same genetic landmarks as its mother. Seems that this X-5 has the same ability to pass her genetics on to her offspring as we have seen with a few of the others, of which one is dead and the other in the wind someplace. The board wants to exploit the opportunity presented by this X-5," Max went taut in her bonds her eyes wide, "They want her impregnated immediately."

Lydecker sounded dejected as he replied, "Immediately."

Max started thrashing in her bonds, thoughts of the story she had been told about her own mother washing up behind her eyes, she didn't want to be a surrogate, she didn't want to be touched like that! She was not some animal in need of husbandry help!

"Logan!!" She thought bitterly, knowing deep down that there was no rescue from this fate. No Zach to help get her out, no one and nothing to fall back on, not here… It was all gone.

She was in surgery the very next day as they extracted her ova for use in the latest experiment on her. She thrashed so violently as they brought her in that they were forced to strap her heavily. Now she could barely move at all, even her head was strapped to the surgery bed. Her whole body was stiff in protest of her treatment, even as she cried knowing even her best efforts were in vain.

If this proved successful there was no doubt that they would keep her caged producing children as fast as she was fertile to restock the dwindling genetic supply in Manticore's possession. Caged and shackled like the Alien Queen she remembered seeing in a sci-fi flick, her only purpose in life was to bring the next generation into being. That was not how she wanted to spend the remainder of her days!

It had been two years in the vise like grip of Manticore, Max had found through a sympathetic intern. She grimaced inwardly not realizing that so much time had passed. She had been in and out of tranquilizers so much in that time she knew that much of it had passed without her even realizing the time had been lost. She looked around her assessing the possible weaknesses of her surroundings, she grimaced they were bleak to say the least. She had recently been transferred to another building on the complex.

She was pretty sure it was because of her soaring lack of success carrying any of the children they had tried to start in her, to term. She had lost most in the first weeks of pregnancy. One she had managed to carry for five months before it was lost. While she was happy that she had thwarted Manticore again and again she was becoming worried about the trend. What if there was something wrong with her? She had almost convinced herself that it was something in their procedure that was causing her to abort the attempts. But she still had a pang of doubt, when she got out of here… if she got out of here, if Logan was still alive, she did have every intention of trying for more kids. That was a lot of "If's", but she still held out hope even after two years that she would eventually be freed of her bondage. But recent events cast a serious doubt about her ability to conceive and carry to term any child.

The Transfer had happened in the middle of the night, oddly with no escorts that she had been able to determine, just Lydecker. He had her blindfolded and bound tightly and moved as if he was trying to avoid detection by anyone. After a long time traveling he had plopped her down in a chair, secured her thoroughly and removed her blindfold… and without saying a word he had left her here.

The room was plain the walls were painted gray almost black in color. She was seated on a metal chair that reminded her of the electric chairs she had seen in old films about capital punishment. She peered down seeing that the chair was bolted to the floor with bolts that must have been an inch across on the head of them. She wondered silently what they were so worried about.

She had lost track permanently of the days she had been her, she had even lost her ability to care about it. One day into the next it was all a blur of pain and frustration and humiliation and a hundred other adjectives that described her existence now. All she had been since she had been here in this particular room was a target… a target unable to fight back against the frustrations of Lydecker's foiled life. Even the sight of another had been little comfort. It had been a tease when that X-10 that Kito character had come into her life, leaving her behind like so much garbage, dead weight. He had promised her release, had even started freeing her of her bonds. What happened after that she had begun to think was some well-staged hoax. He had been "Overcome" by soldiers and she had not seen him since.

Lydecker was here now, just standing by, and she wondered bitterly what he was waiting for. She was so used to the abuse now she couldn't even remember a time when there was no pain in her life. But he just stood, to the right of the door looking at it and not her as if he was expecting company. She felt her head droop again, the one thing that he had done was to give her a sedative.

That was when she heard the din outside, she wanted to look up as she heard the door open, but was unable to. Then she heard his name… in a voice so familiar she knew she was dreaming, having a sedative induced hallucination. She regained control of her motor functions finally able to lift her head, she gasped aching as she saw him. She told herself that it had to be an apparition, a ghost of her steadily deteriorating mental state. His look was wrong… he was older than she remembered, his hair graying steadily. He was dressed in a black infiltration suit and the look on his face was one that she could never recall seeing on Logan ever, grim determination. He paused in the doorway his gun slowly lowering and the look on his face sliding off like water and a look she recognized from him, relief, happiness. "No!" her head denied her sight, "He is dead! It is another trick another torture!"

That thought went around and around in her head, denying the reality of her sight, until he touched her and the reality slammed into her like a shock. It was him, it was Logan and he was here to rescue her.