Alec woke early that morning still feeling exhausted. If he had thought he slept bad with out Lexa at home, he definitely slept worse here. He yawned and stretched his stiff muscles as he pulled on his clothes. He considered taking a quick shower to wake up, then he remembered the brief, freezing shower that had felt like flowing ice he had taken last night at Joshua's apartment and shook he head. He really needed to see about getting hot water heaters running again.
He mentally ran through the list of transgenics he knew to be here and finally decided to ask Bolt. The young X7 could use something to keep him out of the trouble he seemed to constantly find. The poor kid could only take Mole yelling at him so much. Alec opened his door and stepped out in the hall. He looked down towards Max's apartment and what he saw made his heart stop.
She was laying on the floor, half in and half out of her door. She was shaking badly and Alec could see that she was in the throes of a particularly nasty seizure. He rushed to her side and picked her up gently. He put her on the bare mattress in the bedroom and rushed back out into the hall. Going to the last room he knocked sharply. Waiting with impatience, Alec nearly jumped the young woman who answered after a moment.
"Sari, do you have any tryptophan? Max is having a seizure." He explained quickly. She nodded and returned a moment later pressing a small plastic bag half full into his hand. "Thanks, I'll get you some when I can." He told her.
"Don't worry about it. We have plenty." Sari yelled after him as he dashed back to Max's apartment. He entered and in his haste, forgot to close the door. He sat down next to Max on the bed and gently lifted her head.
"Here, Max, you have to take these. I'm sorry I don't have any milk." He told her. Her eyes were clenched shut with pain. She dry swallowed four pills, wincing as they went down.
Alec laid her back down and she curled into the fetal position. "Vin." Max whispered so low that if Alec's hearing hadn't been what it was he wouldn't have heard it.
"What about him?" He asked leaning down to her.
"I want him here." She said as a tear rolled down her face. Alec gave her a hug. "I do too Max, I do too."
He brushed her hair away from her face and asked "Do you think you will be okay while I find you some milk?" She nodded and he turned to go.
"Alec?" Max called out. He turned and she said "Thanks."
"No problem Max. I have to look out for you until Vin gets back." Alec said smiling slightly. Tears flowed down Max's face unchecked as she nodded and closed her eyes.
Alec went back to Sari's apartment to ask her for milk. She let him in as she went to find a glass in the run down kitchen. Alec watched her walk to the small refrigerator. Her long brown hair swished back and forth in the ponytail pulled high on her head. Alec imagined that Lexa's hair was about that long if she hadn't cut it. Sari's hair was a shade darker though. Her dark eyes contrasted with her pale skin, her smile wide as she handed the glass to Alec.
A small boy toddled out of one of the bedrooms and held a sticky hand out to Alec. Sari picked him up before he could reach him. "No son, Alec's clean."
Alec stared at the small boy for a while before Sari snapped him out of his daze, calling his name.
"Are you okay Alec?" She asked concerned.
"Yeah, I'm fine." Alec said pasting a smile on his face. "Thanks for the milk." He turned and hurried away.
~!~!~!
Max drank the milk slowly, the glass shaking slightly. "I thought Manticore had fixed these damn things." She said bitterly. Alec didn't reply. Max looked up from her glass and saw him staring off into space, an odd expression on his face.
Alec's mind had returned to his earlier thoughts. Sari's son had sparked a curiosity in him that hadn't occurred before. He wondered what his and Lexa's child would look like. Would he or she have Lexa's beautiful smile? Her chestnut hair? His eyes? Trying as hard as he could, he couldn't imagine what the baby would look like.
He tried not to let himself think of the fact that there had been problems with the baby like Lexa had said. There had been nothing in the paperwork that Logan had showed him to give any indication that it was something serious.
"SO are you going to let me in on your thoughts?" Max asked.
"Not really." Alec told her distracted.
"Fine. I need to be somewhere anyway." Max told him trying to stand but ended up swaying and landing back on the bed.
"I don't think you're going anywhere." Alec said sternly.
"I have to. Logan paged me. That's were I was going before all this happened." She insisted. As if on cue her pager beeped again. She checked it more out of habit than needing to know who it was.
"That's him again. He's paging emergency. I have to go." Max attempted to stand again and Alec caught her as she swayed. Alec steadied her with an arm around her waist.
"I'll go with you. There is no way you will make it over the fence and to Joshua's alone. No offense Max but you look like hell." He told her smirking. She rolled her eyes.
"And you are supposed to look any better?" She asked returning his smirk as she gestured to his wrinkled clothing and torn jacket.
Alec shook his head. "Shut up."
~!~!~!!~!
"Logan?" Max called from the doorway of Josh's house. Alec stood behind her tapping his fingers on the wall.
"Stop that." She told him. He ceased the tapping and began humming.
"In here." Logan called from what now was his study. The transgenics entered to find him at his computer typing hastily with a large smile on his face.
"What's up?" Max asked. Logan looked away from the screen and saw that Alec had accompanied her.
"Good you're here Alec. I've been calling you." He said, his voice rushed with excitement.
"Lost the phone in the fight at Jampony." Alec said shrugging.
"Well, anyway. I have some good news." Logan said.
"What news?" Max asked.
"I may have found Vin and Lexa." He told them. Max gasped and Alec leaned towards the computer, an intensity in his eyes.
"Where?" He asked.
"I tracked a military convoy through Washington south to a small airport where there were seven large jets waiting." He told them. "I don't know where they went from there but give me time and I will have their location." He finished and turned to give them a triumphant smile.
His smile was met with looks of disappointment that were barely covered by weak smiles.
"I know that it is kind of disappointing guys, but at least we found some trace right?" He said trying to cheer them up.
"Right." Max said lowly. Max turned to leave and Alec followed. "We have some plans to make for a supply run." She told Logan. He nodded.
"Alec?" He called out as they almost reached the door. The younger man looked back at him.
"Yeah?"
Logan reached into a drawer and pulled out an envelope and handed it to him. Alec looked at him a confused expression on his face. "Just something I thought you would like to have back." The older man told him.
Alec shrugged and put the envelope in his pocket.
~!~!~
Max and Alec made it back to TC with minor troubles. A crowd had gathered outside the fences and were throwing bottles at the walls. Alec had suggested just jumping over but Max had scolded him saying they didn't need to give the humans another reason to be scared. In the end they had trudged through the sewers to a manhole in front of the medical center.
Alec helped Max out and she stepped away from the hole dusting off her pants. "We really need to find someone to take care of that." She told him.
"I'll get someone on it in the morning." Alec assured her. He looked at his watch which read three- thirty p.m. They still had a good portion of the afternoon left.
"How about we go see what's going on down at the headquarters?" He suggested. Max nodded.
"Good idea."
As they were walking Max asked "Why don't we go see Sketchy and Original Cindy tonight at Crash? Dix told me that one of the X6's got them out and back to their places okay."
Alec nodded. "Yeah. Leo. He had a little run in with a few sector cops afterwards. Dix told me this morning before I went to sleep.
"I thought you went to bed after I did." Max said.
"I meant to but when I got there I couldn't sleep." He confessed. " I stayed up with Dix for awhile."
"Yeah, I went to see him before my seizure. You know, I didn't even get to say good-bye to OC." She said. The main hall loomed before them and they walked up the side steps.
"It was best for them to leave at night. We didn't want to wake you." He said.
Max shook her head. They walked into the building, down the main hall to room Dix had taken over as his office. The transhuman was bent over his computer typing furiously.
"Hey Dix, what's up buddy?" Alec asked.
Dix looked up startled. "Oh, hey I didn't hear you come in."
"Sorry we scared you." Max told him. "You have anything for us?"
"Actually I do. Our food supplies are running low as I am sure you have noticed. We need to start bringing in medications, and tryptophan is in high demand." He handed Max a list. "This is a list that Mole and I put together. If we can get all this, we should be okay for a couple of weeks."
Max looked at the list stunned. It had over three hundred items on it. She looked at Alec. "Well I guess I wasn't lying to Logan about that supply run. Looks like we are going to have to put our Manticore given talents to good use."
Alec's eyes twinkled with mischief. "Why, is our Max saying that we are going to have to rob from the rich?" He put a hand to his chest in mock surprise.
"I'm just saying we do what we have to do to survive." She said defensively. Alec raised his hands in defense.
"I'm not arguin'." Alec told her. He turned to Dix. "Can you get a list of all the able bodied X series together?"
"Alec, what are you thinking?" Max asked slowly.
"Just puttin' your idea into action Max. I figure we get enough people together and pull several big jobs in one night." Alec smiled his most charming smile.
"That wasn't my idea Alec. I was thinking we
steal everything on the list that we can ."
Then a broad smile crossed her face. "THEN we can steal from the rich."
Max and Alec shared a laugh while Dix shook his head.
~!~!~!~!
Vin was changing out of his filthy uniform when Paige came in. They had been doing drills in the field when Vin had been pushed into a large mud trap by another soldier. She stopped at the door embarrassed. "Sorry." She apologized.
"It's cool." He told her. She turned her back while he changed.
"How's Lexa?" He asked. Paige hesitated. "Paige? Is she okay?"
"She's not doing so well." She told him.
Vin turned around. "What do you mean not doing so well?" He asked.
Paige looked him in the eyes. "She's reverted back into a soldier. Completely."
Vin hung his head. "Damn." He looked up at her again. "We need to get her out of here soon. I don't understand how she can be so changed. You said she was only gone for about six hours right?" Paige nodded. "I know she's more stubborn than that."
Paige shrugged. "I don't know what they did to her."
"You come up with any better plans to get out of this hell hole?"
"Maybe, I was thinking about it and really the only time of day we have any kind of freedom is that walk at night. The doctors are insisting she exercise some to keep up her blood flow."
"But what about me?" Vin asked.
"I am going to come bring you chow before we go. I am going to put tape on the underside of your tray, use it to hold back the latch on the door. There will be only one guard, unarmed at the end of the hall. Behind him is a door to the outside. If you follow the trail about one hundred feet or so beyond that door to the river we can meet there. There is a large group of boulders where they do the escape and evade maneuvers we'll meet there."
"And what about your child?" Vin asked.
Paige hesitated. "She's well guarded but I am not going to leave without her. I was going to have you and Lexa escape then go back for her."
"Negative. Too risky. Where is she from here?" Vin asked.
"She's in building Delta. Two east of here. The infant unit is on the farthest side north." Paige told him.
"Here's what we will do. I will get your daughter and meet you two. Just make sure you have her there."
"What if she won't come?" Paige asked worried.
"We'll just have to make her." Vin replied grimly.
"By force?"
"If necessary."
"But the baby.."
"Will be fine." Vin's tone brooked no argument.
"Tomorrow Night?"
Vin grinned wildly. "As good a time as any."
~~~~~
Paige hurried to the doctor's office. She was supposed to be helping with sick call. There were rarely any patients due to transgenic's great healing ability but she was still supposed to be there. She looked at the clock as she entered. Five minutes late. Just what she needed.
She sat at the small desk that was hers for the short time she was to be here and started sorting through the stack of records there. She had been neglecting her work due to their move. Before that she had been told she was to stay with the two soldiers they had recently recaptured. Lexa had been her main priority. She was supposed to report if anything started to go wrong with her.
Paige shook her head as she looked through the files. Most of them were the mothers that had been in the special division Lexa and Vin had belonged to so long ago. Most of the mothers had had difficult births. Many had not made it or they had been so badly damaged that Manticore had decided they were not to breed again no matter how hurt they were for donors.
One doctor had misjudged his readings of the DNA
analysis and allowed the wrong pair to breed. The child resulting
was so malformed that he had only lived a few days.
Paige frowned then opened the record pertaining to that particular
case. She skimmed through the first few pages. It all seemed
normal.
Her frown deepened when she reached the pages dating the mother sixth month. It seemed that one of the doctors had ordered hormone treatments. They were administered in pill form. The mother was also given psychoactive.
Paige remembered all the times she had made Lexa take the shake and swallow the pills. She had been told that they were for the baby. Now she didn't doubt that. Evidently the doctor had been trying to duplicate what they had done to the X7s, their complacency. The psychoactive drugs they had put in the shake must have been what helped them break Lexa so easily.
Now Paige knew for sure they had to get Lexa out of here. The stuff she had been taken was what had caused so many deaths. They were trying to perfect their second generation process on her. At that moment she considered herself lucky to only be apart of the regular breeding program. She knew the X5 she had been paired with had escaped from the other facility that had burned down and wondered if she would be able to find them if they made it outside.
That was a big if.
~!@~!
Inside her head Lexa screamed and raged against the walls that had been built against her. When Paige had entered she had found that her replies didn't seem to make it past her mind to her mouth. Slowly, as time went by she began to lose herself. Her thoughts became jumbled and her will weakened. The guard throwing the field manual into her cell had been the last straw. She had picked it up and locked the last part of Lexa that raged away.
X5-427 lived again.