Well this little sequel sure has gotten long.  Just remember the more you review the more inspired to write I'll be.  I might put in another two chapters on this story.  I plan on leaving it in a good place for my next little project which will be a semi-related series of action adventures involving Max and Alec's missions for Senator Burnhart.

This chapter and the next will be angst ridden.  What can I say I'm in the middle of studying for finals, organic chemistry and molecular cell processes have me in a down mood.  The ending will be written in my post finals week high.

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His dark blond hair hung boyishly over his brow, and I resist the urge to reach out and smooth it back.  I notice his left leg falter as he places his weight on it, and I silently curse my stupidity.  "God Alec, how's your leg."

"Huh?"  My question shakes him straight out of his reverie and he nearly falls over his own to feet as said leg buckles underneath him.  The boy who'd walked in with Lela and I each manage to get a hand under his arms before he hits the floor.

"Looks like it went straight through the upper thigh.  Bullet didn't nick any arteries.  I guess with all the adrenaline surging his body was compensating for the injury."  I stare in surprise at the skinny boy.

"He came with Sandeman.  He's one of the good familiars."  I give the young man beside me another once over.  On second glance he's probably only a couple of years younger than me and Alec, and his slender build belittles the sinewy muscles of his forearms and legs.

"Can you help me carry him?"  I tilt my chin towards Alec.

"No Maxie."  Lowering him to a sitting position on the floor, I slide down to his side.

"Who's the leader here?"  It's a struggle to keep my tone light and teasing, my lungs are still recovering from my ordeal.

"I can fight."  His hands grip mine tightly.  "Please Maxie, these are my people too.  I've known a lot of them since I was a little boy, gone on missions with some of them.  We never called each other family, but some of those people are like my brothers and sisters.  You have to let me fight for them."  I'd almost forgotten how persuasive his little lost boy face was.

"Just promise me one thing.  Promise me not to get yourself dead."  The little boy face disappears, and a bit of the soldier takes over his dark hazel eyes as he nods his head.  His hands are like iron in mine as I help him to his feet.

"See already healing."  I try to keep the bitterness out of my smile.

"Let's party."

We take the entrance at a run, spreading out across the main chamber.  Using my rapidly returning strength I leap straight at one of the marble columns.  Fingers clinging to the grooves, I shinny up the side and kneel on the top.  There's Mole and Joshua on one side standing back to back, a long gash down Josh's arm bleeds freely but otherwise they both look unharmed.  Kate is crouched down on the other side of the room with four other x-series giving emergency first aid.  Our people must have done well while we were otherwise distracted.  Of the original three hundred familiars, there are perhaps around a hundred still standing.  About two hundred transgenics are still scattered around the room fighting, another sixty or so lie on the floor dead or incapacitated.

My breath catches in my throat as he draws my attention from across the room.  Ripping a pair of ceremonial daggers off the belt of one of the dead familiars, he dashed halfway up one wall before turning a tight midair somersault.  He landed behind a pair of high familiars in a catlike crouch, and plunged the daggers into their backs before they had a chance to react.  Cocky bastard is always showing off.

I allow my enhanced vision to kick in as I scan the room for signs of serious trouble.  Fighting off familiars is all good and well but the whole purpose of tonight's little venture is the snake toxin.  Something niggled at the back of my mind.  There'd been something odd about the stone slab that I'd been tied to earlier.  My eyes focus tighter on the platform.  That's it, there's something odd about its center.  While the majority of its surface is worn smooth stone, the middle portion is dotted with thin grooves.

Think damn it.  I'd been pretty out of it when I'd been kidnapped and dragged out here, but I knew for certain that the compound was situated on a small island out in the pacific.  Island, water, poison.  If the grooves in the dais extended all the way through to the bottom of the floor, there was a chance that the holes emptied out into the water intake below us.  My eyes flick upwards.  A hundred feet or so in the air, suspended from the ceiling, directly above the dais like an atom bomb is large silver basin.  I follow the suspension ropes downwards, four of them in all.  Two have already been cut and the ends of the ropes dangle uselessly, the other two are still intact.  The fate of the human race hung precariously from a pair of flimsy looking silk ropes.

"Alec!"  His head whirls around at my call.  I sign rapidly at him, my hands a blur of movement.  "Protect the ropes, make sure nobody cuts them."  His eyes follow where I point and after a moment an expression of horrified comprehension crosses his face.

A pair of the white robed high familiars makes a dash for the ropes, one moving right and the other going left.  Alec can stop one of them, I blur across the room towards the other.  My doubled fists clash down against the familiar's wrist as he makes a swipe at the rope.  He misses but doesn't drop the dagger.  Refocusing his attentions he slashes out at my stomach.  I drop to the floor kicking his feet out from under him in the same movement.

As he falls he makes a last lunge for the rope with the dagger.  The viciously curved tip snags the center of the rope ripping it twain.

Alec blurs across the room and leaps like a tiger onto the stone slab.  He catches the outer edges of the basin as it falls and for one breathtaking moment stands like a statue of atlas, balancing the bulky object over his head.

A familiar rushes him, dagger extended towards his exposed stomach.

I had to reach him but I would never make it in time.

From nowhere Biggs rushes to Alec's side, and the basin is supported between them.

With their combined strength they fling the poison far across their room.

An instant later the dagger pierces their flesh and both of them fall to the ground.