-by Infie
"Hey, White. I'm in."
The silky, menacing voice on the other end of the cell phone hummed with pleasure. "Glad to hear it. How are things progressing? Was it difficult to get in there?"
"No problems. I told you, I've got an in with 494."
"There better not be any problems. There is a lot riding on the success of this operation. Don't fuck up."
"Words to live by, Ames."
Alec strode into the command centre to the welcome sound of laughter. Dix and Rhys were hunched together over one of the computer systems, chuckling to themselves every few seconds. In the two weeks since Rhys' arrival, he'd slotted himself into life at Terminal City seamlessly, like the cog of the engine that no one knew was missing til it was replaced. Alec felt a flash of grief. Biggs had been like that, too. For someone who'd only been at TC for such a short time, he had left a big hole, and Alec knew that was one of the reasons he'd kept Rhys out of the field. He shook his head at himself.
Joshua was reading nearby, looking up from time to time and giving his toothy grin. Alec patted him on the shoulder. "Hey, Josh." he said, lifting his chin at the giggling pair. "What's up?"
Joshua laughed. "Rhys and Dix, cracking codes."
"Oh yeah?" Alec's brows rose with interest. "529 always did like playing with that stuff. What kinda codes?"
"DOD codes." Joshua huffed happily. "Code bitches, going down."
"DOD codes." Alec moved up behind Dix and Rhys. "Find anything interesting?"
Rhys leaned back and stretched, customary white shirt straining against his shoulders. "Lots. Did you know Manticore was a DOD based operation?"
"No." Alec leaned over to look. "What have you managed to get to?"
"Well, it's taken all morning, and I don't know that someone who wasn't already pretty intimate with the Manticore systems would even have been able to find this, let alone get in, and ..." Dix broke off as Alec laid a hand on his shoulder.
Rhys chewed on the inside of his cheek. "Backups!" he laughed. "Identification is as far as I've gotten so far. They changed all the keys sets from what we had at home."
"We did find that they have a lot of stuff on you, Alec." Dix chattered at him excitedly. "Under Missions, Re-indoctrination, Psychological Operations, Psychological Analysis and.. uh..." he squinted at the screen. "DNA assay and analysis."
Alec had been nodding along with the list, a half smile on his face. When Dix hit 'DNA', his smile froze. He frowned. "What have they got on me under there?"
Rhys shrugged. "Haven't managed to crack that yet. But when I was poking around at home, it was mostly stuff about that virus they were so concerned about. Uh... Argent." he winced in remembrance. "I stopped looking as soon as I read that name."
Alec's eyes narrowed. "Find out." he paused. "Who else is there?"
Dix looked. "Uh... we have files here on the whole X-series, it looks like."
Rhys spoke up. "There's a couple of separate areas here though. Codes... Resurrection, Prevention, and Separation."
"Prevention. What's in there?"
Dix looked. "The file names are encrypted. There's only five or so, though."
Alec frowned. "Resurrection, then."
Rhys whistled softly. "Files on about... 40 X-series, here. You, Max.." he paused, scanning for codes he recognized. "511 is here. And 656." He spun in his chair to look up at Alec. "Wasn't that one of the '09 escapees?"
Alec nodded, rubbing his temple as he thought. "Yeah. Tinga, I think." He brought his hand down, came to a decision. "Start with the Resurrection files. I want to know what the hell they were up to."
Dix and Rhys nodded, bending back to their screens. Alec turned to find Joshua standing right behind him, eyes intent.
"What are you thinking, Alec?" Joshua asked softly.
"I don't know yet, Josh." Alec clapped him on the shoulder. "But I don't like it already." He looked up and saw Zane heading his way. "Gotta go, big guy." Joshua nodded and stepped aside, but moved to sit with Dix and Rhys as Alec left.
"Zane!" he called as he caught up. "What's up?"
"Tattooing stuff." Zane dropped his armload of equipment on the table used for planning missions. "I think I got enough colours to match just about anyone here, but it will take some work to find the right combination for each of us." He scratched behind his ear thoughtfully. "It took about 30 tries to get me right, but they excised the barcode first."
"They excised the barcode?" Max arrived at the table, looking at her brother askance. "You mean they cut it off your neck?"
"Yeah." Zane continued to rummage and sort. "For the experimenting part, sure. You can't screw up on the real deal, or people can tell. And believe me, it's a much bigger bitch to have it cut off over and over."
Max stared at him. "I don't want to know how you know that."
Zane looked at her, eyes blank. "The same way Zack knew it, Max."
Max remembered Zack's scarred neck. "Oh." she said.
Zane took pity on her. "I wore my hair long as much as possible." he told her with a grin. "And they figured out the mix pretty quickly, all in all. At least, once it's tattooed, it's a permanent fix." He paused. "Unless it gets cut off again, of course."
Max shuddered. "Great. Appreciate that image, Zane."
Alec fiddled with one of the tattoo needles, face blank as he remembered the last time barcodes had been surgically removed. "Anaesthetic." he said suddenly. He paused, his brows coming together as something tickled the edge of his mind. "Anaesthetic.... anaesthetic.... fuck..."
"What is it, Alec?" Max was frowning, too. He held up a hand to stop her, turning away and thinking hard, trying to drag the memory into the forefront of his mind. Suddenly his head came up, and a moment later he was back at the computers, hand on Dix's shoulder for balance as he leaned over him. Rhys scooted away so Alec could fit.
"Melatonin, Dix." Alec said urgently. "Look up Melatonin, DHEA, and Thrysotoxin." Dix's fingers danced over the keys.
"Nothing, Alec."
"Shit." Alec stood, closed his eyes, and paced. "Try: Melatonin, DHEA, and Trigoriacin." Dix tapped rapidly.
"Bingo, Alec. Three hits." Dix punched up the first one, scanned the summary, and looked up at Alec wide-eyed. "Does this mean what I think it means?"
"If you think it means we can walk around outside and not trip those cursed thermal sensors, it does." Rhys said, staring at the screen. "Where the hell did this come from?"
"Thermal maskers." Alec was pacing again. "We used thermal maskers to deke out temperature switches, cause they're usually set to trigger on higher temperatures than the baseline, but not lower." He ran his hand through his hair. "But we couldn't use those here, because a too low basal temperature would be just as big a giveaway as too high on those damned screens. The same kind of problem was there for cooling vests or suits; too hard to maintain a specific temperature over the whole body... heads, hands and feet show up different shades, and any kind of power source lights the damned thing up like a sun. We needed ... need... a way to precisely lower our basal temperature, not by too much or too little. Just by about a degree and a half."
Max nodded. "With you so far."
"About 20 years ago, there was a lot of research done in the field of stroke recovery, which found that certain drugs could lower someone's temperature, inducing artificial hypothermia. Melatonin was used for sleep deprivation studies, and it had the side effect of lowering temperature, as did DHEA. When they were combined 14 years ago with Trigoriacin, it was discovered that the temperature of the human body could be very precisely controlled." Dix read off the screen, then turned to Alec. "This has some pretty crummy side effects, Alec."
Alec returned to the screen. "This information is almost fifteen years out of date, Dix. And I'd be willing to bet that there is something in those Manticore files for dealing with it."
"Alec... how did you know about this?" Max stared at him. "Why didn't you bring it up before?"
"Because I forgot." Alec closed his eyes, rubbed his forehead again. "When I went to re-indoctrination, after... after Berrisford; they went a little too far. I needed surgery. They gave me Trigoriacin as an anaethesthetic, to keep my body at a low enough temperature that I wouldn't be..." he heaved a resigned breath, swallowed. "... permanently damaged."
Rhys turned away, shoulders tight as he made a show of returning to his keyboard. Max nodded thoughtfully, and Zane looked at Alec a little wide-eyed.
"Lucky you thought of it, Alec." Dix was excited. "This could mean all the difference for us outside."
Joshua spoke up for the first time. "This could let us take the fight to them."
"Word, my brother." Mole had entered the room unnoticed. He swung his ever-present shotgun to his shoulder. "About time, I say. Time to kick some ordinary ass."
Max flushed. "We can't afford to 'kick ordinary ass'." she told Mole heatedly. "We need to lay low, let them forget about us. If we make any hostile moves, it'll give them the excuse they're looking for.."
"The excuse?" Mole laughed harshly. "To do what? Kill us?" he thrust his jaw forward and clamped his cigar between his teeth. "Seems to me tranny killin's been the course of the day for quite a while now."
Max shook her head. "Mole. We need to be better than they are." she told him passionately. "They aren't all like the ones that are attacking transgenics. We just need to reach them."
"Look, lady." Mole ground out, "I was all for this unification thing six months ago, but I'm telling you right now, I am not gonna die for your ideals."
"Our ideals, Mole. We need to be able to live with these people when all this is over."
Another angry voice spoke up from the other side of the room. "What we need is..."
"It doesn't matter!" Alec's voice whipcracked across the impending argument. All the transgenics in the room straightened involutarily in response, even Max. Alec took a breath and consciously softened his tone. "We have a lot of work to do before it even becomes a possibility. Max. What do you need us to do?"
Max stared at him a moment before replying. "Dix. Make a list of volunteers for the drug testing. No one under X-6." Dix nodded, scribbled a note. "Zane. We'll need you to arrange a schedule for the tattoos. We'll start with me and Alec. Try and group us by skin tones, so that we'll minimize the time needed for colour matching. Dalton, you're with Zane." They nodded and picked up the tattooing equipment, then looked at Alec.
"Take the second floor." he told them quietly. "And make me a list of what you need for power, anaesthetic, instruments, and so on. Get... uh... Lise to help you. She was a med specialist." They left.
"We need a full list of the populace here." Max continued. "Weight, height, age, for dosing. And we're gonna need a lot of these drugs."
Mole and Joshua exchanged looks. "Just tell us where, Max."
Max nodded at Dix, who made another note. "I'll have a list in a couple hours. We might need some out of town trips, though."
"Then we'll make out of town trips." Alec sounded irritated, even to his own ears. He was distracted by Johan's quiet approach.
"What have you got, Johan?" Max asked him tiredly.
"We still have four transgenics missing." Johan told her bluntly. "Chase, Click, Sven, and Mel." his eyes slid to Alec with the last name. Mel was one of their unit mates. "Mel's been gone six days now."
Alec's face was blank. "Thank you, Johan." he said carefully. "Zane and Dalton are upstairs. They could use your help." Johan nodded and left. Alec's lips compressed.
"I gotta go out for a bit." he said, looking straight ahead. "I'll be back later."