Title: They All Fall Down
Rating: R
Summary: Max is recaptured by a reorganized Manticore and is putting on the guise of insanity after her plans of escape fall through. Can Alec's unexpected appearance bring those plans back into play?
Disclaimer: Characters aren't mine blah blah blah... I disclaim.
AN: Mucho kudos to my super beta Natalie180 for making this readable!!!!!
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I can be as humble as the next guy
Or I can blink and make you crumble from the inside
I could be every nasty thing you ever dreamt a man could be
Cause they all fall down
Cause they all fall down
~They All Fall Down~ SR-71~
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Isolation was your stereotypical 8x8 white padded cell. A cot on one wall, toilet on the other, food delivered through a slot on the door. Max sat idly on the cot surveying her surroundings with a disappointed stare. Another stint in isolation gone entirely to fast.
"Do you know why you're here?"
"You have nowhere else to put me," Max suggested innocently.
"Why aren't you with your unit?" her interrogator tried, not satisfied with the response his first question had elicited.
"Because I'm crazy," Max retorted happily, swinging her legs against the bed frame. "I'm a mistake and you don't want me corrupting the kiddies."
The man sighed and made a note in Max's ever increasing file. Since being recaptured by Manticore 18 months before Max had made it her job to needle employees such as this one. She would spend a week with her unit before she was caught 'acting out', then shuffled between Psych-Ops and isolation before she was released back into the group, at which point the process would begin again.
Early in her stay she had been bitter and rebellious, caught attempting escape more than once. Now, over a year later, she had resigned herself to the face the fact that escape was an impossibility, at least for now. X5-452, Manticore's greatest success and greatest failure combined in one feminine little package, was now viewed as nothing more than a broken solider, a complete lunatic.
"Do you think you're ready to rejoin your unit?" the man finally inquired.
"Well if I say yes you'll take my word for it, but if I say no, which is in fact a very sane answer, you'll ignore it because I'm crazy and don't know what I'm talking about, and I'm deemed fit to leave anyway there's kinda a Catch-22 here. Either way, you're letting me go, so why don't we skip this psycho-babble bullshit and get to the part where you pump me full of drugs and then release me into the wild," Max smiled broadly and the doctor sighed again. He knew that Max was perfectly sane but her persistent habit of 'acting out' had no other reasonable explanation. He could tell the truth and report that she was faking, playing a game with them, but that wasn't what his superiors wanted to hear. They wanted assurance that X5-452 was stark raving mad and consequently no longer a threat. At this point, Max was singing loudly and dancing wildly around isolation. She certainly was quite an actress.
"Last night my little dancer came dancing to my door, last night my little angel came pumping on the floor," Max flitted around the room, swaying to her own inner music, her body went through it's familiar performance leaving her mind free to wander on it's perfectly logical, sane path. She liked isolation the best but even Psych-Ops was preferable to the stringent, methodical brainwashing when she was with her unit. Repetitive drills, turning out a race of cold, detached, killers, all her earlier work, their time on the outside, forgotten. "She said, oh come on baby, I got a license for love and if it expires-."
"452,"a guard stationed in the door motioned her out into the hall. Max giggled delightedly at seeing her escort.
"Red!" she greeted as he fastened a handcuff around her slim wrist, the other locked around his own. A great improvement to the stretcher they had chained her to at first.
"452," he replied with a perfunctory nod. Max had half of the guards under her spell, her blue-eyed companion being one of them, a blush as red as his hair creeping up his freckled face.
"You being a good boy Red?" she growled, tracing the outline of his ear with her tongue. Even the sane inner Max took a fiendish glee in her superficial little seduction. 'Red' jumped nervously and stepped up their pace as Max let out the tinkling, off kilter giggle she had adopted for her performance.
"Don't touch me!"
Max ears pricked up at the sound. She rarely ran into anyone during her travels. In fact she knew no one else in the building, other than the few X's in her unit. Her sole friend was Biggs. He was in her unit, but more often than not it was in Psych-Ops that she saw him, often too medicated to provide any real conversation.
"How do you know I'm not contagious? Right this second I could be infecting you with crazy freak vibes."
"With a rebel yell she cried more, more, more. In the midnight hour she cried more, more, more," Max sang, announcing her presence to the approaching transgenic obviously en route to Psych-Ops.
Max's guard nodded at the other guard as they passed but Max didn't notice, her attention focused on the thrashing transgenic strapped to the stretcher. They rounded another corner and were out of sight in seconds but Max had seen enough to leave her visibly shaken. She had seen the pain in the brief second those green eyes met hers.
She was too rattled even to tease Red as he locked her in the small changing room. The generic hospital issued robe was exchanged for a grey t-shirt, blue camouflage pants, and black combat boots. Max went through the act of dressing in a daze, pulling her hair into a haphazard ponytail with the ribbon of her gown.
"You're not allowed-," Red began apologetically, gesturing to her hair when she emerged from the booth. Max was on a constant suicide watch and was never left alone with anything more dangerous than her own fingernails for over a minute. Normally, Max would've put up more of a fight but today she was otherwise occupied. She handed over the ribbon, leaving her arm extended long enough for Red to refasten the handcuffs. They finished the trek to Max's common room in silence.
"Until next time," Max called, to throw off any unease Red may harbor over her uncharacteristic silence. The door clicked shut, the green light on the lock flicking back to red as Max entered the common room. The room was furnished with rows of cots, each grey cover tucked under each mattress with methodical severity.
"What's wrong Princess?" Max spun to face her companion, relief stealing over her at seeing his familiar features. A few of the other transgenics milling around the room had noticed her entrance, all quickly turning away, similar expressions of distaste on their genetically perfected faces.
"You look spooked," Biggs added, linking a comforting arm through Max's. In his increasingly few lucid moments Biggs was more of a comfort to her than he seemed to realize.
"I think," Max began, her voice unsteady, "I think I saw Alec."
~~~
TBC...
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