Chapter 3

Logan glanced at his watch. They had been here for nearly two hours! It was beginning to get kind of late and he was beginning to feel kind of hungry.

Normally Max would have dropped by for something to eat, or an Eyes Only mission, by now and they could have had dinner together, but she had said that Original Cindy wanted her for something at Crash. Max hadn't been specific with the details, but it sounded like it involved a bet, Alec, him losing and some kind of gruesome torture. Logan guessed he wouldn't be seeing either of them tonight … still that didn't mean he had to eat alone.

"Look, I'm starving. How about you two join me for dinner and we can talk more then?"

Katherine looked at him blankly. 'My God,' he thought, 'How thin she is!' He knew that despite their insatiable appetites transgenics could survive on very little nourishment for a long time. For her to look that bad … he wondered when had she even seen food last.

"That would be great. Thanks." Logan spun his head round startled. It had been the man who spoke. Nicolas, wasn't it?

Whoever he was, he had a broad grin on his face now. Logan noticed that he looked far more animated after the mention of food. "We haven't eaten in ages."

"Well, I make great chicken casserole."

 "Sounds perfect," the man paused suddenly and turned to the woman by the window, "Doesn't it, Kitty?" Nicolas, or whatever, fixed his sister with a piercing stare.

She shrugged, moving away from the window to sit back down. "I guess … Thank you."

"Good girl," the man sighed, turning almost apologetically to Logan. "I'm sorry. It's just that I haven't gotten her to eat at all since Zack vanished. I know she's transgenic and all ... but still … she can't survive on nothing. It's not like she ate much to start with."

Logan nodded and wheeled across to his kitchen. The man followed him leaving his sister on the coach.

"No appetite. That's unusual in a transgenic, isn't it?" he asked, remembering how often he had seen Max and her siblings wolfing down food even at the most unlikely of times.

"Very, but … you know … since … I guess she's too busy worrying all the time to eat much. Gets better at times, then it gets worse again."

"Well, I guess there's a lot to worry about since Manticore burned down … err … Nicolas, isn't it?"

"Call me Nick, and nah, her appetite went way before that. When they took the kids."

Logan glanced up from the chicken he had been cutting up. "The kids?"

"Yeah." Nick grinned, when he spoke his deep voice grated so that it sounded almost like a growl, but somehow the effect wasn't intimidating – it was actually strangely pleasant to listen too, "What! Did you think she's the only carer in the family? She did such a good job with her boy that Lydecker started assigning the rest of us charges too. Gave them to the girls mainly, but as I'm kinda twinned with the kitten in there I ended up with one too. Although she won't remember me. She was too little when they took them."

"Who was she?" Logan asked, taking a saucepan from the cupboard, "And who's 'the kitten'?"

"The kitten? Oh that's one of the many, many things I call Kitty. Katherine." Nick sighed, but he was only stretching. The rapid flow of his words continued as fast ever. It was strange how a former soldier, used to speaking only when spoken too, could suffer from such an acute case of verbal diarrhoea, but then again maybe that was why. There was finally someone willing to listen to him.

"Sandeman gave us our original names apparently." Nick continued, "He seems to like proper long names, but in a military environment they get worn down into much shorter ones really quickly."

Logan's eyes narrowed, "What do you know about him? Sandeman. Have you ever met him?"

Nick just shook his head, "No. He used to run Manticore before the Committee assigned it to Lydecker, but we were just kids back then and we rarely saw him anyway. Then Sandeman finally vanished completely a while back."

"Oh, right."

"You're looking for him too? Why?"

"Huh?" Logan hesitated.

"The look on your face when I mentioned Sandeman." Nick explained coolly. His voice sounded a little harder now. He wasn't exactly menacing, but … it was clear that Nick was no fool. He didn't consider Logan a threat, in fact for some reason he obviously trusted him, but clearly not enough to give information without being satisfied as to what it was going to be used for.

Logan noticed the other man's large muscular hand resting on the table. He had seen the kind of damage Max's dainty little fist was capable of; he didn't even want to image what a blow from those massive paws would feel like.

"Fine. Yeah, we are. He might be able to help out with a little problem of ours. Why are you after him?"

"What kinda problem?" Nick just looked curious, nothing more.

"Manticore virus," Logan didn't want to be distracted, "Why are you after him?"

"It's a long story." Nick scratched his head; for once he seemed unsure of how to proceed. "Do … do you know a … transgenic by the name of Joshua?"

Startled, Logan turned his wheelchair around to stare at the other man. "Yes, he's … a friend." He said cautiously.

Nick looked surprised and then suddenly pleased,  "Oh … great! Hope he's doing okay! Joshua was an old friend of ours at Manticore when we were kids. Well, to the extent anyone was friends there," a shadow passed over his face, "Anyway he kept talking about his 'Father', Sandeman, you know, and well once the place burned we thought we ought to find this 'Father', because somebody's going to have to take care of Joshua and his lot, and well, he made them so - he might."

"I see," Logan said, stirring the deliciously wafting concoction in the saucepan, "Who's 'we', you and Kitty?"

"Me and the five other X3 who are still left. It's them mainly looking for him. I generally stay with our girl over there and Kitty-Cat's more worried about all things X5."

"Why are there so few of you?"

"When the X5s came in the picture … we were made redundant. Permanently redundant in the good old Manticore way." The look on his face left no doubt as to what he meant by that.

"I'm sorry."

"It's okay. I guess it was Kitty who kept us alive the longest with the whole carer thing, but once … they took them … Well they had X5s to train up and X4s could run their little missions temporarily. Not that it was long before the X4 were removed too. Lydecker just didn't like the old series, preferred the ones he trained himself."

Logan nodded simply and they were silent for a while, until Logan voiced something that had been bothering him for a while, "What do you mean 'they took the kids'? You've said that several times now."

"Once all the X5 were past a certain point, they took our charges away from us. They stopped using us care for them and we never saw them again. It hit us all hard, but Kitty the worst … and her boy was the oldest at that!"

"Her boy being Zack?"

"Yes … Hell, she loved that kid. He was like a son to Kitty; even though she was so young herself … I always thought they must've programmed one heck of mother instinct into her! I'm sure they didn't mean to do it, but they must've … you know, when they took them away she … she … I remember … I was there at the time …"

The X5 nursery had suddenly gone very quiet.

"Say again, your orders, sir?" one of the older females, Abby, asked incredulously.

"You are to surrender control of the X5 unit immediately to these soldiers." Lydecker indicated the unit of ordinary soldiers behind him, "Your services as carers are no longer required. Hand over the X5s … Now!"

The assembled X3s, the carers, looked hesitantly from one to the other. Then slowly, when Lydecker looked like he was about to yell again, one of the females, quite wide-eyed little Honey, stepped forward. Her feet dragged against the floor. She was moving painfully slow, but her charge was in her arms. Her siblings shivered at the sight. They knew how much she loved her charge, Jack.

"Faster!" Lydecker barked.

Honey flinched at the sound, like a beaten dog afraid of being hit again, but her feet automatically speed up. She didn't let Lydecker see how close she was too crying either. She couldn't.

A soldier snatched the child away from her.

"What's going to happen to him!" she cried, hugging her waist were the warmth of the infant had been a moment before.

"None of your concern. Get back in line." Lydecker didn't even bother to raise his voice.

One by one, with painful hesitation, the others followed her example. Abandoning their charges to an unknown fate. Betraying them … and they knew it.

Another female carer came forward. X3-857, Georgie. Her X5 charged cradled in her arms, X5-493, Ben, now age 4.

"No!" a shriek suddenly spilt the silence.

Something bounded forwards, knocking Georgie to the floor, snatching the child from her arms as she fell. The others gasped. Lydecker snarled.  Kitty.

She stood still in the middle of the room. Glaring at the soldiers. At Lydecker. "You're not going to take them away," she whispered.

"Put that X5 down, 327!" Lydecker bellowed.

"You're not going to take them away." Her voice was firmer now, louder.

"Two weeks in solitary confinement! Surrender the X5!"

"You're not going to take them away!"

"Two months in solitary! Give him to me! Now!"

"You're not going to take them away!" She turned away, to put the child back in his cot perhaps.

Lydecker seized a gun and fired. She jumped, avoiding the shot. Her feet hit the floor and Kitty blurred out of Lydecker's sight. She reappeared in front of Zack's cot. One arm cradling Ben against her bosom. Unharmed.

 

There was silence. Broken only by Zack's insistent "Kitty! Kitty!" as he tugged the back of her combats, trying to get her attention. She lent down and scooped the six year old up in her other arm - and all hell broke lose.

Lydecker fired again, ordering his soldiers to follow suit. She leapt from the cot to the window, dodging bullets. Several of the ordinary soldiers bounded forward. She kicked through the window, turning to avoid spraying the children with glass. One of the soldier dived at her. She leapt into the air, but the ordinary soldier got lucky. His hand closed on her boot. She fell to the ground, turning onto her back to brake the X5s fall …  and then she felt the sharp pain in her thigh. Lydecker's last shot had hit her.

It was just a tranq. They couldn't use bullets around the X5s. She knew that - but she also knew she had lost. She couldn't fight now. She couldn't escape. Had that been what she had been planning to do? What a stupid idea! Escape was impossible.

Pushing the dizziness away for just a few more seconds. She raised herself upwards to look at the children in her arms. Their little faces were turned upwards. "R-remember I … I love you." She had only learned the meaning of that word a few weeks ago, from an abandoned dictionary in the classroom, but she had felt the emotion for six years.

Zack turned his tear-filled child's eyes up at the closest thing he had ever had to a mother. His little hand stoked her cheek, wiping away the tears that he had never seen on her face before. "Love you," he repeated.

"T-take care of … your br … brothers and sisters for me …" and then she felt Lydecker lift him away from her, she heard him cry as darkness finally consumed her.

"What did she do?" Logan asked.

Nick snapped out of his reverie, "What? Sorry, I was miles away."

"What did Kitty do when they 'took the kids'? You didn't actually tell me."

The transgenic sighed, "She - she lost, lost the fight."

"Oh … well … this is ready." Logan said, indicating the meal.

"I'll go and get Kitty." Nick said tonelessly, leaving.

Logan watched the transgenic's retreating back. He still hadn't decided whether he would help them.