"All set."
West smiled down at the three Xs they had made. "Looks great, doesn't it?"
"It'll look even better when we lay 452 and Cale right in front of the damn gates." Hunt sneered as he lit another cigarette.
"Don't get ahead of yourself." West warned. "We still have to do a lot more here and the conclave wants her alive for now."
Hunt was about to say something, but stopped. He spun quickly on his heels and saw a horrified transgenic trying to hide in an alley. "Look!"
The others whirled around and saw the girl. It was then that Hunt saw it was the blonde from earlier. He held up his hand to stop the others and took off after her. He followed her over the alley wall and managed to catch up with her. He grabbed her by the elbow and turned her to face him, then formed a fist and punched her hard in the face.
She flew to the ground from the force of the impact. She slowly pulled herself to her knees and looked at the man before her, wondering how he could hit so hard. Before she could get fully to her feet, he jumped up and kicked her down again.
"I wanted this to last." He hissed and gathered her head in his hands. "But I've got places to be."
She began struggling, but to no avail. He snapped her neck with such force that for a moment he wondered if he might've ripped her head off. He dropped her body and looked around for any other witnesses, then made his way back to the others.
"I took care of it." He told them.
"All right, lets get back inside." West said and they all walked back to the building they were hiding in.
* * *
Max raked her hands through her hair as she paced around her office. She kept shaking her head and muttering things to herself, which worried everyone in the room. She didn't go down to see the bodies this time, not wanting to see anymore faces she recognized.
Finally she managed to get ahold of herself. She took a deep breath and turned to Mole and Alec. "Go and tell everyone what happened and start up a night watch. Make sure they patrol every night in groups of three. Go."
"Got it." Mole nodded then he and Alec left.
She turned to Aaron. "Anything?"
"I haven't figured it out yet." He told her, obviously angry at himself for not knowing. "Damn 3%."
"It's okay." Max told him. "Without you we'd be pretty lost by now, so don't be so hard on yourself."
He shook his head. "I was built to know, and I don't. This is my job. I should've solved this in two seconds and their blood should have started staining the pavement by now. I'm failing."
"As long as you're trying, you're not failing."
He shrugged off her words, feeling that though they may be true, they didn't help him any. He sighed and walked to the door. Before walking out, he mumbled to her, "I need to think."
* * *
"Shut up! I said shut up!"
Mole looked at the struggling Alec, then picked up his shotgun and fired a shot into the ceiling. The crowd around them grew silent and he turned to Alec. "Proceed."
Alec turned back to the crowd. "You've already heard about the second group of murders, so I won't bother going through that again. I - I don't want to talk about it."
He paused, trying to push the image of the three human Xs from his mind, then cleared his throat and went on. "Max has asked Mole and I to start up a night watch type deal. We'll need volunteers to patrol the streets of the City at night, in groups of three. If you're interested... I dunno. I guess just -"
He stopped and looked around the room. He spotted a piece of paper on the ground and got down from the table he was standing on to get it. He smoothed it out then jumped back on the table and showed the paper to them. "Just sign this paper. Put your name on here, and then you'll be put into groups."
"What about guns?" Someone yelled out.
"Uh... Mole?" Alec looked at him.
"I suppose I could get a handgun a group." He grumbled.
"All right, it's settled then." Alec said. "Just throw your name on this paper if you wanna help out."
He jumped down from the table and put the list where he had been standing. He stood next to Mole and watched as most of the transgenics went to sign the paper. Mole turned to Alec.
"We're gonna need more paper."
* * *
Aaron sighed and sat on the edge of the roof. He kicked the building with the heels of his feet in tune with a pre-Pulse song that was playing in his head. He stared down at the police and protestors as he normally did, not sure why it brought him a sense of calm.
He wondered if one of the anti-transgenic protestors could be behind it. A lot of them still seemed to hate transgenics enough to kill them in cold blood, but... how could they even take on a transgenic? He thought it was a group effort but a transgenic would certainly be able to escape - and probably defeat - a group of ordinaries.
Unless it was a transgenic that finally cracked and was taking things out on his or her brothers and sisters. The X pattern would make sense if that was the case, but why kill so many at one time?
He ruled out the transgenic case and wondered what other group it could be. Then it hit him. He remembered one of Max's stories... one of the reasons that they were all in Terminal City in the first place.
He immediately pulled himself to his feet and ran as fast as he could back through the building and to Max's office. He peeled into the room and grabbed Max by the arms and shook her excitedly.
"I figured it out! I know who it is!"
She pushed him away, not so eager to be shaken like a rag doll. "We were actually talking about it here and -"
"The cult!" He blurted out, interrupting her. "They're the only ones that hate the transgenics enough to start killing them, and the X pattern! The X pattern is just their way of sending us a message. The bodies that make the Xs are weak and battered, how they think transgenics are all the time! It all makes sense."
Max nodded slowly. "That's what we were thinking, though we didn't quite reach the X pattern theory yet."
Alec and Mole walked into the room then and Alec handed Max five or six papers full of names. "Got a lot of volunteers."
"Are they set into groups?" She asked.
He nodded and pointed to the blocks drawn around every group of three names. "I put your name on too."
"Good, is yours on there too?" She said absentmindedly as she flipped through the list. "'Cause we'll need people who're experianced against the cult loonies."
"Well I - the cult? It's the cult?"
Aaron nodded and Alec paled just a little. He chuckled nervously. "Great."