Summary: Max has a weird dream and Alec rescues an X5. Also, what is White up to?
Pairing: M/A, duh!
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Not mine. All belong to Cameron and Eglee who I'm still pissed off at coz they couldn't stop the show being cancelled. Oh and there's a reference to Jean Grey from X-men (oddly, my least favourite character!).
A/N: See, I updated so quickly!! I was planning to post this chapter with the previous one, but I couldn't finish it last night. Oh well, to make up for the very short previous chapter, here's a long one with slightly more plot.
Chapter 9: The Girl
Darkness.
Flashes of light, sounds of heavy breathing and running feet.
More darkness.
Some light, more heavy breathing, more running feet. But the surroundings can be made out now. It's a dirty street, full of garbage, a skeleton of a car lays deserted, barbed-wire fence in the background.
She knows this place! It's the streets of Seattle, not far from TC. What is she doing here in full daylight? Her body seems to go on an automatic sprint. Air comes in and out of her lungs desperately. And what is that feeling in the pit of her stomach? Anxiety? Fear?
Darkness again.
When the same image appears, the surrounding sound accompanies it. Many more running feet, not far behind her. Gunshots. Shoutings.
"Stop, you transgenic filth!"
Max suddenly realises what's going on. She's been exposed. She's now running for her life. How did she get there, though?
She braves herself to glance behind her. Sure enough, several men in grey suits, comm. links attached to their ears, guns held in their hands (some are even firing them), are in pursuit. She recognises one of them as White. He has this pleasurable look on his face. He enjoys the chase.
Crap! How did I get here? How did I let myself be found?
She picks up the pace to the point of blurring. Some more bullets are shot. A piercing pain stabs through her right abdomen. She puts one hand on it. Sure enough, blood stains her fingers. One of White's cronies has pulled a lucky shot and actually nabbed her on the stomach. Blood is streaming out, but she can't slow down to do anything about it. Her vision is getting fuzzy.
She hears sounds of shouting in the background. 'Death to the mutants!' And, 'Gas them all to hell!' The sound becomes louder as she continues to run. Pretty soon she can see a huge cross set up in front of Terminal City. The mob is parading angry slogans at the fence.
I gotta go to the supply tunnel. Max hears the voice in her head but, somehow, it doesn't sound like her.
She avoids the mob. It seems that she's lost her pursuers when she blurred. She runs toward the opening of the concealed supply tunnel. She's starting to feel dizzy. Her bleeding is not stopping. She knows that if she didn't get there soon, she'll pass out for White to conveniently find.
She picks up the pace, her vision is blurring and her legs are threatening to give out.
She sees the opening. Then…
She hears running feet coming at her direction from behind. She probably has twenty seconds ahead of them. If she can reach the tunnel before they get there, she'll be home free.
She struggles to move her reluctant feet. She sees a figure coming out of the channel. It's someone she recognizes! Her memory can't register a name to that face though. Who is that? 494?
"494?"
And then she crashes straight at Alec before darkness engulfs her vision.
---
On her bed, Max awakes with a jolt and finds herself crashing… straight into the arms of Alec.
It takes her a minute to realise that this all seems too 'familiar' (no pun intended to the psychotic-homicidal-maniac-NSA/CIA/FBI/special agent in-charge-of-everything White – gee, the man must have amazing amount of card space in his wallet, huh? And not to mention the gold-class membership to cult snake-o-loony).
Wasn't she crashing into Alec a minute ago? And there was… White on her tail. And… she was wounded! On the stomach! Max quickly scrambles to check on her abdomen.
Nothing but smooth skin there… She sighs in relief. It was all a weird dream! God, I've been having a lot of those lately. Probably why I don't sleep…
Then she notices her current companion in the room. Alec is still seated on her bed, amusement/bewilderment sketched on his face. He's probably wondering why she was furiously touching herself a moment before. She racks her brain as to why she could be waking up into his arms.
"Alec, what the hell are you doing here?!?"
Aah, so she's also not a morning person. "Oh come on, Maxie. Don't tell me you forgot our little breakfast date?" he puts on his hurt-puppy look that even Max finds hard to resist.
She's about to launch her nasty comeback when she notices that the front of Alec's jeans jacket is soaked with blood. Before she can think of anything, she leaps out from underneath the covers and furiously examines the stain.
"Are you hurt?? What the hell did you do this time?!? I swear, Alec, if this is one of your scams…"
Alec, however, is too preoccupied with the image of a half-naked Max to deliver a reply. Max's bed-wear – which is merely composed of tank top and tiny black panties – is conveniently revealed when she leapt out of the covers. Oh, you gotta love the classics…
And it certainly doesn't help that the barely-clad lady is now running her hands all over Alec's front side, trying to play nurse.
"Gee, Max, I never would've figured you for a panties-and-tank-top kinda girl. You look good, by the way. 'Been working out?"
When Max realises her state of undress, she gives a quick little gasp and proceeds to cover her bottom half with the sheets, all the while fuming at Alec.
"I can't find a wound."
"Yeah, well, this isn't my blood."
"Then whose…"
"That's why I came. Get dress, will you? I'll fill you in on the way." Alec gets up from the bed, turns his back on her, and waits.
"Alec, get out!"
"Oh, come on, Maxie. Nothing I haven't seen before. Besides, I'm not gonna look!" He chuckles, "You've shown me plenty already…"
Max hurls a pillow at the back of his head but says nothing. She climbs out of bed and grabs her jeans. It's been a couple of weeks since their lil' talk and she and Alec have pretty much returned to – what Max likes to call – their pre-heat routine: she's not really 'friendly' to him, but both know that they've got each other's backs. She pulls a shirt over her head.
"Any word from Syl and Krit?"
Alec shrugs, "Nope, still AWOL. They're probably pulling a heist somewhere. We can use the extra money."
Syl and Krit have taken residence with Max in her small apartment ever since they came. It was a bit weird after Max found out that they were 'heat buddies'. For a couple of days she was actually expecting to walk in on them 'doin' the dirty' – as Alec put it – but, as far as she could tell, they weren't acting any different. So she decided to just drop it and enjoy living with her siblings again. Four days ago, though, they just disappeared, leaving Max a cryptic note that just said: 'Gotta take off for a couple of days, baby sis – we've got to take care of something. Don't worry, we'll be back in a couple of days.'
"It's not like them to just take off." She pulls on her jacket, "Done."
Alec faces her, "Good, let's go." He turns around again and tosses a bagel over his shoulders at her. "'Got you breakfast; freshly swiped from Martha Stewart's Bakery. Aren't you proud of our X6s?"
Max catches the bagel easily and takes a bite, "Aren't I always?"
***
On their way to what Max finds out later to be the infirmary, Alec fills her in on what happened. Apparently, he came across a wounded X5 as he was checking up the supply tunnel this morning. She had a gunshot wound to her stomach which she seemed to get from their friendly neighborhood Familiar. Before she passed out in Alec's arms, however, she managed to croak out his designation. Alec thinks that she might have been in his unit, but he can't really remember her.
Max literally comes to halt in the middle of the street when Alec finishes his story. MAJOR dé·jà vu. "It's my dream…"
"What?"
"I dreamed about this, Alec; this morning, before you came. I was her in my dream. I mean, I saw as she was being chased by White and when she passed out after she saw you. It was like I was inside her body… What do you think this means?"
"'Beats me. Maybe some new Jean Grey mojo that comes with your runes?"
"Maybe…" Max is too busy with her thoughts to wonder who Jean what's-her-name was.
"Look, we'll worry about that later. Let's just find out who she is, ok?"
He and Max enter the infirmary. The transhumans have established it in one of the cleaner-looking former hospitals in TC. Roe, a transgenic similar to Marrow – but sans the latter's inclination to establish a cult hooked on his blood – is the resident medic. He is currently putting away a transfusion kit that previously linked his blood vessel to that of the mysterious X5.
"How's she doing?" Max asks Roe.
"She's lucky the bullet missed any internal organs. She still lost a lot of blood, but my plasma took care of that. She'll wake up in a minute or two."
Max nods and looks at the X5. She looks a bit young to be an X5, 18 probably, or 19. She has shoulder-length brown hair and a creamy complexion that's slowly regaining its natural color. She's got cuts on her arms and her clothes are ragged, showing that White's probably got her on the run for some time. Max sighs, thinking of the other X5s out there that she can't save.
Alec also studies the girl. He's gotten a peek at her designation when he brought her to the infirmary. That's how he knows that the girl, despite her young age, is an X5. "Her designation's 913. It sounds familiar to me but I just can't place it."
Max nods, "We'll ask her in a minute. She's waking up."
The girl – X5-913 – starts to stirs. Her eyes twitch then slowly flutter open. She takes in her surroundings: the relatively dingy room (especially for an infirmary), the bed, the bandaged wound on her stomach. Then she sees the other occupants of the room: a juiced-up transgenic with veins popping all over his body, a female with a pretty face who's curiously pouting and… 494!
913 immediately scrambles to her feet, ignoring the 'uncomfortable' twitch in her stomach.
"X5-913 reporting, sir!" she barks out at Alec.
Alec glances at Max before looking back at the girl. "Wow, at ease, soldier. We're not at Manticore anymore."
913 somewhat relaxes though she ignores Roe's demand to lie back down. She looks at Alec as if waiting for instructions.
"Sit down. You have a hole in your stomach."
913 looks at him as if unsure of what to do then, very reluctantly, sits back down on the bed. Roe comes over and fusses over her bandage while Max and Alec peer curiously at her. 913 tries very hard not to wince through her pain.
"Do you know him?" Max asks her, gesturing toward Alec.
913 looks at Alec as if the answer was very obvious. "Of course. X5-494. You were my CO back at Manticore."
"You were a CO?" that was Max.
"You were in my unit?" that was Alec.
"Well, yes, until I was sent on a deep-cover mission in '16."
Alec looks at Max and whispers, "That was before my little trip to psy-ops 'cause your brother took up amateur dentistry. 'Explains why I don't remember her, though. Psy-ops kinda screwed my memory."
"You don't remember me, 494?"
"Alec. My name's Alec. And, I can't believe I'm saying this, but you should pick a name for yourself."
"As if permanently? But I'm not going to any mission. Wouldn't that be irrelevant?"
"No, look, here's a tip. First rule in the outside world is: pick a name. See, this is Max. She named me…" he shoves Max to 913. "…and that freaky looking guy over there is Roe. We all have names out here. It's easier than calling you nine-one-three all the time. But hey, if you can't come up with anything, I'm sure Maxie here will give you a nice one, like Bullet-hole or Faint…"
"Nina."
"What?"
"My name, I pick Nina."
Alec looks at her and grins, "Well then Nina it is."
"Why 'Nina'?" Max asks.
913 – Nina – shrugs, "I don't know. That was what this old woman kept calling me. She didn't speak English, though."
"What were you doing out there anyway? How'd you end up with White on your ass?"
"Some of the other X5s tipped me about this place. And based on our compromised situation, I thought that it would be most strategic to re-group. I was suddenly pursued approximately five sectors from Terminal City."
Alec looks at Max, ""Looks like ol' Ames is still busy sending out the search party."
Max asks Nina, "Do you have any idea how many transgenics are still out there? Where are they concentrated?"
"I don't know."
Max nods, "Well, you're safe now. Why don't you lie down for a while? We'll arrange living quarters for you."
Nina looks reluctant but lies back down on the bed, "Thanks."
Alec gives his little smirk, "Yeah, well, welcome to Terminal City."
***
"So do you remember anything about her?" Max asks Alec outside the infirmary.
"No, not really, Max. She's probably the only one from my unit that I don't remember."
"That's weird."
"Yeah, well, I wasn't exactly CO of the year with all my trips to psy-ops. I'll ask around if anyone knows her."
"Poor girl, 'looks like she's been alone since she got out."
"Well not anymore."
***
Ames White is standing in a room filled with computers. Some of his men are typing away in front of the monitors. They show heat-imagery feeds from the streets of Seattle. So far today, they've caught three mutants. White is in a good mood. He approaches Otto.
"What's the stat on our mole in the inside?"
"The new one's just been activated, sir."
"Good, we need to dig up enough dirt on those freaks before we can launch our master plan."
"Yes, sir. What about him?" Otto pulls out a file on the computer showing Alec's face.
White smiles maliciously, "Otto, my friend… he'll be our key to 452's destruction."
A/N: Ok, I hate introducing orig. character, but I promise you that I won't make Nina into a Mary-Sue and that she'll be really important to the plot. Um, what else? Oh, special gold stickers to anyone who knows where I took the name 'Roe' from! Anyone? Well, I'm a HUGE fan of war movies and Roe is the name of the medic in Band of Brothers (he's my favorite character and he's actually not fictional!). Ok, what do you think will happen next? Please review!! It'll make me happy and encourage me to write faster…