Author's Note: Wow, I updated in under a week! I went camping this weekend, so I came back ready to write. I also would like to finish this story before school starts. I don't think it's going to happen, but I want to get as far as possible.
Disclaimer: I own Minx, but nobody else. Why do I get stuck with the hated ones? :)
Dust In The Wind
By Be Boring
Chapter 10: Dark Day
Bad news? Sit down? God, no. Logan shakily lowered himself into the only available chair left in the room and turned his eyes towards Max. Was she breathing? He was so shaken that he couldn't tell. "What's wrong? What's going on? Is she alive?" The words seemed to rush out of his mouth so quickly that he wasn't sure Dr. Shankar had made out anything he'd said.
"Yes, she's alive, but barely. At the moment she's in a coma. I normally would have declared her critical, but that would draw too much attention. All we can hope is that she pulls out of it."
"So, what happened? What kind of condition was she in when she came to you?"
"I don't think she knew how critical she was, even when I deactivated the implant. She was still conscious when I used the defibrillator, and at first I thought she was going to be fine, but she just passed out. Everything has been downhill from there. Her body is trying to get rid of the implant, but she wore herself down so much that she had to literally shut down in order to do any good for herself. Unfortunately, I don't think she has enough strength left in her to come back out of it. I'm not sure she'll die, but I highly doubt she'll ever wake up. I'm really sorry, Logan."
Logan shook his head. "I won't believe that. Nothing has ever been able to keep Max down for long, and she's been through more than even a transgenic should go through. She's survived that implant before with flying colors, I won't believe that it can get rid of her this time. She has to wake up." He reached inside his pocket and pulled out his gloves, slid them on, then sat down and took Max's hand in his. "I'm going to be here when she does."
Dr. Shankar opened her mouth as if she was going to contradict him, or at least urge him to go home, but seemed to think better of it. Instead, she turned and went out the door, getting swept up in the rush of patients outside. Logan didn't even acknowledge that she had left, everything else seemed to be fading away. Now he could see that Max was breathing deeply, it only looked like she was sleeping. He squeezed her hand gently and waited for a response, but there was none. He squeezed a little harder, but there was still no reaction. Finally, he leaned forward until he was as close to her ear as possible without touching her.
"Max, I'm right here. If you can hear me, please do something." He squeezed her hand again. "If you can feel that, please squeeze back." Nothing. Maybe she just needs a little time to recover. That's it, her body just needs to work through its problems. She's an X5, so a normal diagnosis can't really count for her. Can it? Dr. Shankar was a little more familiar with transgenics than other doctors, she must have taken Max's genetic make-up into account. Still, she could be wrong. Max wasn't the average X5, she didn't have any junk DNA. Although they didn't know yet what she was designed for, some of that programming had to be useful right now.
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If there was anything Mole hated most, it was waiting. He liked things to be done right away, and done correctly. He also hated having to depend on others to get something done, but in this case he didn't have much choice. Dealing with ordinaries was something that had to be left up to the X series and psy-ops. He'd brought some of both with him, they were better at getting information. At the moment, he was sitting in an alley outside of Harbor Lights Hospital waiting for his informants to come back. Although he didn't like Logan, he couldn't deny that the man obviously knew Max very well, and if he said that she could be at this hospital, then that's where Mole was going to look.
Lex, a teenage psy-ops, was the first to return. Her eyes always made him nervous, mainly because every now and then they mirrored light back at him like a cat's. "A woman fitting 452's description came in earlier to see Dr. Shankar. She is in room 211. It sounds like that ordinary is in there with her." As Mole was about to dismiss her, she added, "Ames White is also a patient here. He's on the second floor as well."
"What's he being treated for?"
"A punctured lung, a stab wound on his right side, a broken ankle, two gashes in his mouth, and severe blood loss. They have him sedated at the moment."
Mole immediately pulled out his cell phone and pressed redial. Seeing as how he never called any number other than the Rec Center, there wasn't usually a need to dial anything. Without waiting for Dix's greeting, he went straight into his demands. "Max is at Harbor Lights Hospital. I'm going to need backup, it appears that Ames White is here also. He's out of commission temporarily, but I doubt that will last long. We don't have a lot of time to get her out of here, but we'll need to do it as soon as possible. Send every available soldier as soon as you can. I'm hoping to get her out of here by 1700 hours."
Alec listened to the click on the other end of the line, silently laughing at how stupid Mole could be sometimes. He hadn't even bothered to make sure that Dix was the person who had answered the phone. True, if Mole had called even thirty seconds earlier, it would have been Dix that would have answered, but even Dix couldn't deny it when nature calls. Alec had just happened to come in here at that time. After his discussion with Minx, he had tried to get some sleep again, but everything she had said wouldn't leave his mind. Eventually he had given up and gone to talk to Dix and Luke, who knew pretty much everything that Logan and the others had gotten out of her. Luke wasn't here, but Dix had shared as much as he could.
Now with everything that Mole had just said, Alec's head was working overtime. Familiars were tough, so torture would never get through to them, but Minx might talk if White ordered her to. They could form some kind of a deal; White would tell Minx to help them cure the virus in exchange for some information on his son. It wouldn't be too difficult to get the two together, they could just sneak White out of the hospital when they went to get Max. If he was 'out of commission temporarily' as Mole had said, then he shouldn't be too much trouble. The most they would have to watch out for would be people trying to stop them from leaving. There wasn't much security at the hospital, but someone could always call the sector police. They seemed to be a little more honorable now that everyone was so afraid of transgenics.
"I'm not going to get a team together if I'm sitting here," he muttered out loud. It was time to get moving.
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Logan was nearly asleep next to Max, and if it wasn't for how sore he was, he probably already would be sleeping. The chair was so stiff that his entire back had practically seized up. Still, the discomfort in his body couldn't have been farther from his mind. He hadn't been able to take his eyes off Max's face. It seemed that he could stare straight past the dried blood to the beautiful, troubled woman underneath. She had been through so much in her life, but she just kept going. Nothing could keep her down for long, no matter what the odds were. After all of that, how could something she had already survived through once kill her now? It was almost ironic. The Reds and their implants had been long forgotten while the cult had taken its place, but it was still the Reds that had the best chance of finishing what the cult wanted.
What will I do if she doesn't make it? It nearly killed me last time, the only thing that kept me going was the thought of revenge on Manticore. I guess I could always touch her. The virus would still work for a little while, just touching her hand would still kill me. The more he thought about it, the more it appealed to him. If Max didn't make it, he'd go right with her. "I don't know if you can hear me or not, but I'm not going anywhere. I'm not leaving your side. I've told you before, and I'm sure you knew whether or not I said it out loud, but I love you. I know we'll probably never be together, but that doesn't stop my feelings. Even if you move on someday, or don't get the chance to, I'll still be right by your side⦠no matter what."
"Isn't that sweet? As touching as this little moment is, I don't suppose you could tear yourself away from Max and let me in?"
Logan's head snapped up in shock. Mole was peering in through the window, which was only opened a half-inch. Logan ran over and opened it all the way, and Mole pulled himself through the window and onto the floor along with what looked like a bundle of straps. He was breathing hard as he sat up and glanced over at Max's bed. "I sure hope she's worth all this trouble. I was made for long journeys through the desert, not scaling walls."
Logan raised an eyebrow. "But this is only the second floor."
"I also wasn't made for jumping. If you happened to know many other X series, I would have let them bounce up here, but unfortunately I don't think you would have opened the window for anyone you didn't know."
"Would you blame me? It could be a Familiar, I'm not about to let any of them in if I can help it."
"Well, let's forget about that, we've got to get her out of here. It's not going to take anyone long to realize she's here, I'm sure some of the staff remembers her from her last serious stay here. We both know that as soon as she's in government hands, she'll be right back with the cult. So, on to business. I know if won't be easy, but you're going to need to get everyone out of the immediate area."
Now Logan nearly laughed. "You want me to clear out that hallway? It's like you're asking me to empty the ocean with a bucket. There's no way it's gonna happen."
Strangely enough, Mole just grinned and pulled something out of his pocket. "I think we'll make it work."
Five minutes later, Logan went stumbling out of the room, surrounded by a truly foul stench. People within fifteen feet of him backed away as quickly as possible. He shook as he walked, then doubled over and opened his mouth to let out the fake vomit he had been storing there. Now people were backing all the way up to fifty feet away from him. He looked blearily around at everyone staring at him and let a little drool come out. "Don't worry, the doctor says it's not too contagious just yet as long as nobody touches something that I have touched." Turning around and looking at a couple that had flattened themselves against the wall because of the density of the crowd, he added, "You might not want to do that, I was leaning against that wall on the way to the room." As everyone leapt away from the wall as if they were one body, he scratched his head. "Or was it the other wall?" Then he turned around and looked at the people behind him. "Did I come from that way?" Now people had crammed themselves into the middle of the hallway, unsure if they should touch the walls. Logan snapped his fingers as though he had just remembered something. "Oh yeah, I couldn't walk so I just crawled, that's right. Have the janitors been up here yet? They were supposed to disinfect the floor."
Logan could have laughed at how quickly everyone rushed out of the hallway. He crept to the corner and peered around to see if they were getting all the way off the floor. Sure enough, the message seemed to be getting passed along to others and everyone was rushing to the stairs. He walked back into Max's room shaking his head in amusement. Mole looked up and smirked.
"Let me guess, they ran like the devil was on their heels?"
"Well, I did smell pretty bad. I'm going to have to take a shower when we get back to Terminal City. By the way, that fake vomit tasted horrible. I'm starting to wonder where you got it, and if it's a little more not fake than anything else."
Mole laughed as he carefully gathered up Max in his arms. "Relax, one of my crew got it from a joke shop." He looked warily down at Max. "You know, if she wakes up and sees me like this, I'm going to get my ass kicked. Let's just hurry up and get this harness on her."
Alec listened to the conversation from outside the door, making sure he didn't step into the puddle of fake vomit. Mole wasn't going to be happy about this, so it was best if he didn't find out until White was already in Terminal City. He had managed to talk a couple of the X6s from his building into helping him for a little bit of money. They weren't quite as strong as X5s, but they would work for what he wanted. All they had to do catch the man when he went out the window. Alec wasn't about to be as careful with White as Mole and Logan were going to be with Max.
Even Alec had to admit that White looked pretty beat up. Damn, Max went wild on him. Now that the bruises were starting to come in, he looked like someone had taken a bat and used him for baseball practice. Still, that didn't stop Alec from disconnecting him from the machines surrounding him and dragging him unceremoniously by the armpits to the window. There were three X6s standing below, ready to catch him. Since Alec just dumped him from the window, he didn't land perfectly in their arms. Everyone held their breath as the cast on his right leg bounced off the ground and cracked in half. Apparently they had given him a lot of sedatives, because he didn't even flinch.
Alec swung right out the window to land perfectly on the ground. Everyone grabbed one of White's limbs and started making their way to the truck they had taken. As they pulled out and passed by the hospital on the way to the road, Alec glanced at the real team he had gathered together to get Max out of the hospital. Right now they were slowly lowering Max down to the ground with a harness. They had looped a rope around Mole's arms, which were shaking from Max's weight. That poor guy is going to have some rope burns when they're through. Well, maybe that would slow him down when he went to attack Alec after he found out that White was right in their home. Now I'll just have to watch my back for the other few hundred residents there.
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Logan couldn't have been happier when Max was laid onto a cot in the infirmary of Terminal City. She was actually in the same room that he had been in during his stay. It also helped the knot in his stomach when Dana came in to check Max out. If anyone could find a way to help Max, it would be her. He just hoped that she came back out with good news.
When Dana finally did come back out, Logan was the first person to reach her. "How's she doing?"
Dana glanced at the tiny notebook she was constantly taking notes on her patients with. "She's not good, I don't think she'll pull out of the coma on her own. Still, I think we can give her a little help. She's going to need some blood transfusions to help out her own antibodies, which were all pretty much used up while she was going around with that implant in working condition. I say we should take them from a few different candidates just in case her body rejects one of the transfusions. I don't see why that would happen, but Max isn't like the other X series so we might want to take extra precautions. I'm going to need someone to find other volunteers to give us some blood, I want to do this as soon as possible."
Logan was slightly taken aback when Alec appeared by his side. "I'll take care of that. Should it be specifically X5?"
"It doesn't have to be X5, but I'd like to keep it within the X series. Try to get at least four different people if you can. I'd take two, but it will be better if we have more."
Alec nodded and walked off, leaving Logan to talk to Dana alone. "Are you sure this will work?"
She looked at him sympathetically. "I can't say for sure, but it will really improve her chances. I think you know better than anyone else how tough Max is, so I think it's worthwhile to say that you shouldn't give up hope. It could still be a few days before anything happens, but I guess it's no use telling you to go home and get some rest, much less ask you to leave Terminal City for your own health."
Logan smiled sadly and shook his head. "Not a chance."
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It only took a half hour for Alec to collect enough people to give blood. Everyone knew Max, so there was no shortage of people willing to help her. It ended up being two X5s and two X6s that headed off to the infirmary to help. He would have given some blood as well, but he had work to do. They had snuck White into a storage closet just outside the door to the basement, so there wouldn't be too far to move him when the negotiations started.
Minx looked up as he walked in. "Two visits in one day? I'm so honored. Is there some reason I keep getting cursed with your company?"
"You know what I want, and I let you think it over. I'm just here to give you a little extra inspiration."
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Author's Note 2: I think we all know what I'm going to say. Please please please review! Geez, that sounded like begging. No, I'm not begging, I'm asking urgently. It's always nice to read what everybody thinks.
