PART SIXTEEN : " Aikido "
The first thing Senator James McKinley upon walking into his office was the man sitting in the chair opposite his desk.
"Welcome back, Senator," the man drawled.
The Senator smiled and closed the office door. "Mr. Legion. Fe'nos tol. To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?"
Legion stood and smiled back. "Fe'nos tol, Senator. Final preparations are taking place to have you elected into the Presidency. There are only a few technical details to work out, namely one or two individuals to eliminate and the destruction of the remaining vestiges of Manticore, then nothing will stop us."
"Excellent!" McKinley responded, taking a seat behind his desk. "My election rounds throughout the country have gone well, even though elimination of the transgenics was curtailed politically. With Manticore and the pro-transgenic seats removed, the ride should be smooth and without event."
The strange man walked over to the window and looked out at the City Of Nations. "Nothing is without a few bumps. I've made arrangements for Manticore to be destroyed, finally, but I am dubious the tool I have selected will suffice. We may have to take more stringent actions in hand."
McKinley leaned back in his chair and faced Legion. "How stringent?"
Legion turned to the Senator. "The Manticore Observatory underground inside the Sci-Tech building is impervious to a local nuclear attack from the outside, but a device taken in and activated should destroy their headquarters. The remaining operations are only subsidiaries, and the destruction of their headquarters will give us time to initiate your Presidency and begin hunting them down once and for all."
"How are we going to explain a nuclear detonation inside a building that only makes communication gizmos?" McKinley inquired.
"My friend, you're going to tell them not only the truth, but the truth embellished with enough fabrication to put Manticore, the transgenics and everything against what we have planned in the negative eye of John Q. Public again. That the same organization that made the transgenics were hiding, disguised as the company Sci-Tech and working on secret plans to start the third world war in hopes to justify the creation of the transgenics. Sadly, their own evil consumed them and an accident set off their nuclear stockpile. Unfortunate that the immediate region for several miles will be quite uninhabitable for some time, but that's the price we pay for our advances."
The Senator was quiet for a moment. "I don't like the idea of setting off nuclear weapons. That's not the way we do things. Traditionally..."
Legion interrupted him. "Different times require new traditions. The key to survival is evolution; that's what selective genetic breeding is all about. The flip side of that is that the weak must die. As we evolve, we adapt. You must be willing to use the tools at your disposal. This also is part of adapting."
The man at the desk nodded. "Forgive me. I think sometimes my association with the rest of these people occasionally fog the vision we know so well." He straightened in the chair. "I'm glad you're here to guide me."
Legion smiled. "You'll do just fine." He said encouragingly. "Fe'nos tol." he intoned, then turned and departed the room.
* * * * *
Alec found Max in the apartment she and Logan shared, with a backpack on the couch and a few micro-arsenal items alongside. He noticed a trunk was open in the corner and a stash of explosives, knives and various components, and a couple of guns and other electronic gizmos. She hadn't touched the guns, but she was packing up some of the explosives.
"Uh... going on a little picnic, Max?" he quipped.
She remained silent as she walked around the room, ignoring him. Only when he stepped in her way did she come to a complete stop.
"Max..." he started.
She walked around him, but he took her arm with one hand. She swung her arm up and out of his grasp a fraction of a second later and glared at him. "Back off, Alec. I mean it." She went over to the couch.
He looked wary for a second, then contemplated her. He sometimes felt like he understood her, but sometimes she was a complete mystery to him, a total stranger. This wasn't one of those times however. "You can't do this one alone. Let us help. Tell me what's going on."
She looked sideways at him as she began packing the backpack. She almost blasted him with a scalding comment, but something in his face stopped her. It was such a rare thing that he almost seemed comical; he actually looked sincere. She considered; he had a tendency of being so damned annoying sometimes that she could forget he was one of her own kind. But since he happened to be one of her own kind...
She made a decision. "I think the Conclave has Logan. White put me in touch with a major whack-job named Legion. To make a long story short, Manticore isn't totally gone, but it seems to be a little different now. Seems to be geared for observation, something to do with watching the Conclave. Legion wants them destroyed, and threatened to..." she cut herself off, then continued. "I think he took Logan. Or had him taken."
Alec absorbed this information. "He wants you to take them out? Why you?"
Max confessed. "I got the impression that for some reason he wasn't able to do it himself. He looks to be in his 50's, but he's got mental skills like Psy-Ops. I thought about slapping him alongside his thick skull for just thinking about threatening me, and somehow he got into my mind. Felt like every atom in my body turned to stone... I couldn't budge."
"So how do we find him?" he asked.
"Not we, me. This isn't your fight. And I don't have time to argue. He wants Manticore destroyed, fine. I'll finish the job. Then I get Logan back, and destroy them as well. Two birds for the price of one, or however that saying goes."
Alec looked at her, then came to a decision himself. He pulled up a chair. "Sit down." He ordered.
She looked at him and almost laughed in his face. "Right. I don't think so."
"Sit down before I get every on-duty X-series in here to sit you down."
Something in his voice forced her to pay attention. She wasn't worried about the X-5's, they would take her orders over Alec's. But Alec never took this tone with her, in fact the closest he'd come was almost a year and a half ago when he was having a mood regarding Rachel Berrisford; the girl who's father he was supposed to kill back when he was still in Manticore. Max had been concerned about his behavior and had asked him what was wrong. Alec had basically told Max to take a hike and not let the door hit her transgenic butt on the way out. Of all the X-5's, oddly, she felt Alec was most like her is many ways, though he'd been at Manticore all his life. The irony of the situation did not escape her, so she put the block of C4 she was carrying on the couch, and sat.
Alec sat on an empty space on the couch and took a deep breath. "Listen carefully, because you're not going to catch a re-run. You took every transgenic in here and set them free. Then you turned them into a team. In the meantime, you managed to get some of the transgenics and ordinaries working together and actually liking each other. It hasn't been all flowers and champagne, but it's almost a normal life. You think somehow everything you touch gets damaged, which is why you took for-freakin ever getting it on with Logan but you've got it wrong. Take it from someone who's been looking for gold since you released us from Manticore... you've got the Midas gift, Max. Everyone whose life you touch is better for it."
He paused to take a breath. "It doesn't have anything to do with your being transgenic, or your junk-free genetics; it's because of your heart. A lot of people out there owe you an awful lot. Now Logan needs your help. But Max, he's not just your boyfriend... he's a member of our community. You think you have a right to go after him alone, like you always do, but the truth is you don't have that right anymore. And like Lydecker used to say, there's no I in team. You may lead this community, but you're not doing this alone. And that's final."
He leaned back and for an instant she saw in him the same command presence that Zack had always emulated.
Max tried to come up with a scalding retort but found she had nothing to say. She was fairly stunned in fact; she'd never heard Alec say so much at one time and actually have it mean something sensible enough to pay attention to, let alone anything that sounded remotely heartfelt. She wasn't about to let it slide without challenging it, though.
"And if I say no?"
Alec's expression didn't change. "Then I'll make sure you don't leave Terminal City." He noticed her 'defiant' look start to appear on her face and changed tactics. "Listen to reason, Max. We can't afford to lose you, and we can't afford to lose him. If they have him, you'll have a better chance doing something about it with your people at your side. If you destroy what might be Manticore there's no guarantee they won't just kill him since they want ordinaries enslaved or dead anyway."
The silence between them was deafening. Several seconds went by, then her eyes finally softened. "Okay, I'll play it your way this time, Alec."
Then those same eyes you could swim in turned to steel. "But God help you if you're wrong."