It won't break me.

Max woke with a jolt and wondered why. Her mind told her that it was nowhere near time for her to get up yet. Thankfully her internal clock was steady and knew when she had to get up.

As she raised a hand to swipe her hair out of her face she noticed that her hands were shaking.

"No, Oh no." she gasped. She was seizing and this time there was no Zack to hide it for her, no Ben to calm her down and no Eva to grab a gun and protect her. She was on her own. They were going to take her away and dissect her.

For the first time since her sibs had escaped over three years ago she felt a tear slip out from her eyes and wiped it away furiously. This was no time to be weak. She had to get out of here.

She slipped out of bed and fell to the floor listening intently for the telltale signs of any of her unit waking up. Thankfully none of them had been cursed with shark DNA and they slept soundly.

She crept to the door and it took three tries with her shaking hands to open it and cast glances down the hallway to make sure that the guards weren't doing their rotations in this quadrant just yet.

As she slunk down the corridor her quivering body slammed against the wall and her vision blurred and as her sweaty palms moved to knock more hair out of her eyes the blinding truth faced her and ice slithered down her veins- there was no escape this time. She was going to die.

A spasm of pain shot up her spine with tendrils touching every nerve and exploded into her brain.

Max rammed a fist in her mouth to bite back a strangled sob of pain and anger at the whole situation; she had survived all this only to get taken down at the last because of some stupid chemical imbalance. Well, as Bill would say, screw that.

If she was going out she was going on her own terms. She would go to the one place she felt cared for in this whole joint and that meant the labs.

Now that she had a target she could almost forget about the seizing as it punished her slight body and she fought each step to get to the lab and relative peace.

Every single step was a marathon that drenched her in sweat and her clenched fists dripped blood as her fingernails cut half moons into her palms and it seemed like hours of painstaking progress before she reached the labs.

The bright lights of the sterile lab had never looked so wonderful, like a safe haven for her and she staggered through the door almost collapsing.

"What the hell? MAX?"

She lifted her head and saw Bill standing there with a leather jacket on and keys in his hand with his mouth wide open.

"Help." She managed weakly before a seizure wracked her small frame, knocking her off her feet and to the floor.

"What is it Max? What do you need?" But she could barely hear him as he picked her up and held her in his strong arms.

"Stay, don't let me die alone." She pleaded.

"You're not dying Max." he smoothed her hair off her forehead "Not if I can help it." he pushed his bag out of the way and lay her on the table.

He grabbed a sheaf of notes from his bag and rifled through them "Seizures, seizures, serotonin imbalance." His lips mumbled as he sped read the pages. "Hold on Max, I'll find something."

She could hear him desperately flicking through pages trying to come up with something and wanted to smile. He was there for her, like Zack, like Ben. He wouldn't let her die without trying something, she was in safe hands.

"M-m-milk s-s-sometimes helps." She gasped as another fit rampaged through her system.

"Let me just find my goat." He joked as he rifled through his bag "Maybe these."

"W-what are they?"

"Food supplements, I got them for Kelly who's pregnant by the way."

"Congratulayys-s." she stammered as he poured several into his hand.

"They replaced calcium or something; if Milk helps then maybe these will too."

"T-thought you were a lab tech, not an herbalist." She teased as she placed them in her mouth and tried not to bite her tongue.

"Smart ass."  He grinned and stroked her hair again. "You just caught me I was on my way back to the car when I realised I forgot my keys."

"L-lucky for me."

"Karma making a play around." He corrected.

"I'm cold." She shivered and he draped his leather jacket over her shoulder.

"Shh, I'm here for you Max, you're not alone. I'll stay here."

She nodded and let herself drift into uneasy sleep.

When she opened her eyes again she stared uncomprehendingly at the light filtering in the windows. She never slept this long. The corps. belting out TAPS at 6am may have something to do with that normally but here it was day break and looked like it had been for some time and she was destined to be assigned to Psy-Ops for not turning up to morning training.

She rolled off the table and crouched on the floor- wait…table?

She was in the lab, her body had been covered in a coat which was now on the floor and next to her in a chair sat an amused Bill.

"Morning sleepyhead."

"Bill?" she frowned "What am I doing here?"

"You remember last night? Seizures?"

Suddenly the memories flooded back to her and she winced "Oh right."

"Anyway the Tryptophan worked."

"The what?"

"That's the name of Kelly's food supplements. Tryptophan."

"Thank you." She whispered and wiped her fist over her face. "I am so late for training its not even funny."

"Grab a shower and I'll take you out there and explain to the trainer."

Max's head shot up "No."

"Why not?"

"If they know that I have the seizures they'll take me away and cut me open."

"Max," he started in a disbelieving tone.

"I saw them cut up Jack." She urged "He keeled over in inspection and they took him away and cut him open. I don't want them to do the same to me. That's why we were going to leave." She confessed. "Because Zack and Ben wouldn't let them take me when I started to have the shakes. They tried to escape and some of them died so I wouldn't be taken away."

"It's not your fault Max. God you're children not soldiers." He stood up and paced "I hate this!"

"No." she shook her head "We are soldiers and I have to take my punishment for missing training but I won't tell them why. Please don't."

Bill stared at her for a few long minutes "Damn Max." he said softly and ran a hand through his hair. She waited for him to come to terms with the fact that she was going to get punished and she didn't mind so much because it was what they had been trained to expect. She knew that it was the fact that he was soon to be a parent himself that made him feel so protective of her but what he didn't realise was that it was that that made things so dangerous for her. All the time Zack and the others had tried to protect their baby sister had made her weaker. She was a soldier and she had to start acting like one or she wouldn't get through this intact.

"I have a plan." He said finally.

Freshly showered and no longer looking so fragile Max marched out to the training grounds escorted by two guards and a lab technician with a clipboard.

"X5-452 reporting for training Sir." She said saluting the glowering master.

"Where the hell have you been 452? Training started an hour ago. We were about to put the place on general alert."

"That was our mistake." Bill interjected smoothly motioning to the guards. "Last night during routine genome testing we thought we had discovered an anomaly in the base pairs sequencing. We immediately required a test subject to determine any effects that this would have on the adaptation of splicing onto further DNA strands and its immediate focussing on species specific coding."

The trainer looked a little lost at that explanation.

"We commandeered 452 from her bed due to the abundance of feline DNA in her particular sequencing. We were unaware that it would take so much time and she would miss her first hour of training. We apologise for inconvenience."

"Alright." The trainer was mollified "Fall in 452; you can make up the extra hour later."

Max nodded in relief and fell into line along with the rest of her unit who stared at her with curiosity at the dark shadows under her eyes.

Bill nodded and walked away with the guards following him and she hid a smile.

Someone had her back.