A/N lots of people have been asking me if Alec is going to make an appearance. Sort of, is my answer. He will but it won't be until the sequel. The left behind series takes place in Wyoming and Alec is…elsewhere but don't worry I'm a huge M/A shipper so he will be there somewhere.
When the timing is tactical.
Gillette, Wyoming 2016
Lydecker stood in front of the soldiers in front of him and felt a burst of pride. These were his kids. The X-series were a success, cream of the crop and genetically primed and perfect. They were his crowning achievement and it was time to let them discover that for themselves.
"Listen up." He ordered and they all snapped to attention. "As you may be aware we have three main Manticore facilities in the US of A. what you don't know is that there is currently a Special Operations team being commissioned; in the Seattle facility. This facility will house training of only the most elite of all the X-series to work alongside the soldiers already stationed there and to undergo rigorous training to become Special Ops and Commanding Generals. The best of the best. We are now recruiting soldiers to join the team that is already stationed there. To begin with we will be selecting five representatives from each of the facilities to go and train. We only want the best, are you the best?"
"Sir Yes Sir!" they shouted in unison.
"So for the next few weeks you will all be under review. I will be here taking a Unit a week through structured tests to determine your standard. Those tests will establish who the best is; your basic skills will be under severe scrutiny. Timing, precision, grace, only five of you will be chosen."
Lydecker allowed himself a small smile; with over eighty soldiers here the competition will be fierce. "Unit 1 will start tests this week and itinerary will be placed up on the board at 0800 hours tomorrow. Make us proud. Dismissed."
He walked away casting no looks over his shoulder even though he wanted to see their faces as he left. They were good kids and were growing up to be excellent soldiers.
Max relaxed her stance as Lydecker walked away. She had been standing in the sixth row with her unit when he made the announcement and she felt like she couldn't move.
This was her chance to get out of here. If she could prove herself one of the elite then she could finally kiss goodbye to the ridiculous notion that this was home and these were her family. Her heart beat faster at the thought of finally being free of these people and somewhere where she could start over again.
Besides her she saw Bulli straighten up in pride and she scoffed in her head.
As if!
As they disbanded and headed for their dorm Max tried to ignore the chatter that swept around her as they discussed what would be required and who had the best chance for being selected.
"I wonder if Seattle's colder than here?" asked one of Bulli's cronies. Max had named him Silt because he always reminded her of mud, him and his friend Dredge, because they had been dredging the bottom of the barrel when they conjured up his genetics.
"261 will be able to tell us." Simper said loyally as she gushed at Bulli. He preened again and Max rolled her eyes. At fifteen they were all so much more obvious in their flirtations than they had been at twelve. It made Max want to be sick at times.
Whenever one of them got their heat they would try and leave it right to the last moment to tell the trainers to squeeze as much fun as possible out. It really was sickening the way they would be all over each other and purring and writhing.
Max had never had any of those feelings about any of the guys in her unit. Her first heat had been a few weeks after the memorable 654's. She noticed several of the boys looking at her in a way that creeped her out and a rise in her temperature. She'd checked herself into isolation before she could even start having thoughts about the boys because that was one thing she could do without, the only ones she had ever even given thought to in that way were some of the guards- they really were kinda built. With that thought she had urged them to bolt the door and she ended up doing press ups for three days and came out of isolation with her arms feeling like Jell-O. Each heat cycle afterwards she carefully monitored and made such that she was safely sequestered away.
This was why she found it so amusing when Simper hung all over Bulli.
She bit her lip in amusement as she thought of the two of them mating.
"What do you find so funny 452?" Bulli demanded.
Max smirked at him. Since she had hit her teens she had blossomed into an attractive young woman- at least that's what Bill said.
Her hair hung down in curly tendrils to her shoulders and her lips were full and pouting, her eyes were dark and often glittered with amusement. What was really comical was that Bulli had at one time thought that he stood a chance with her. After all the times he had beaten and berated her, he actually thought that she would fall for his pathetic charms and mate with him. As if. She repeated to herself. Like any of the males in here were worth even a second of her time. They were all pathetic. When she turned him down brutally and painfully, he had returned to his old ways of attacking her and putting her down…well when he had returned from the hospital wing that is. Oh she had been back in isolation for that stunt that's for sure.
"Funny? Nothing." She raised an eyebrow archly knowing how much it annoyed him when she dismissed him without a word.
"Please enlighten us 452." He demanded turning red "What, do you think you'll make it?"
Max shrugged and watched carefully as he moved towards her. Her body readied itself for a fight.
"Everyone knows that the oh niners will never amount to anything. Each and every single trainer here as well as Lydecker knows you are a flight risk. Even if somehow you were good enough to pass, you won't be going anywhere. Traitors and runaways have no place in special ops."
Max looked up at him from the curtain of her hair.
"We weren't traitors." Her voice was low warning him away.
But he was surrounded by his loyal followers and glared at her.
"If I say you were traitors then that's what you were." He glared at her with an amused look on his face. "All you'll ever be, to me and everyone else is an oh niner."
Inside Max felt something crack and she blanked her face the way that Manticore had always taught her.
She slowly stood up and faced him eye to eye. Bulli took a step back as something in her face registered.
"You'd better hope not." She growled dangerously "Because if I don't get out of here then I will have to show you exactly what an Oh Niner is. Compared to me, Psy-ops is a dream vacation."
Bulli swallowed "Oh really?"
Without warning she snapped her hand out and caught him on the underside of his chin, his head snapped backwards and he stumbled. She prowled forwards and focussed hard on him. Taking all of her anger and frustration at what she had endured over the past five years she snarled and aimed a kick to his midsection.
Bulli flew across the room like he was on a string and he hit the opposite wall crumbling to the floor in a heap.
From the corner of her eye she could see Silt and Dredge coming to his side but she turned her glare to them and they froze with its intensity.
"I wouldn't move if I were you." She purred and watched them retreat.
"I put up with your crap for five years 261 but now the bitch is back."
She knelt down to where he was laying on the ground, blood pooling at his mouth and his eyes wide in fear.
"Don't ever call my family traitors again. Or you'll really make me mad."
She raised herself to her feet and walked out of the door with her head held high and a satisfied smile on her face.
It faded as she went through the first of her warm up exercises in the gym.
Her first thought had been to deny Bulli's taunts but what if he was right? What if Lydecker and the others automatically dismissed her because she had been one of the escapees? What would she do if she wasn't taken on? All she knew was that there was no way she would be able to stay here and go on the way that she had been. She'd been through more Psy-ops and punishment than all the units at Manticore put together and she'd be damned if she put up with it any longer.
The next few weeks were a trial for all the units that had to wait for their turn for examination. Unit's that had had their testing were told to keep it strictly under wraps as to what the trials entailed but a few details managed to creep out, like the fact that 851 had run fastest on the obstacle course so far and that 566 had got so nervous she'd thrown up in the lecture hall and been sent to her barracks in disgrace.
Theories abounded as to who would be chosen and Max had it a point to ignore all the gossip as it spread like wildfire around the mess hall.
It was easier than originally thought since the rest of her unit had started to give her wide berth after her little demonstration.
Her unit was going to be the last to be tested, due to bad luck…or design, who knew?
As the time crept closer it was also harder to find a quiet place to practice and she was grateful for the Shark DNA that made it possible for her to stay up at night and train rather than sleep.
The night before it was her unit's turn she tossed and turned all night and in the end just went to sit in the quiet of the lab. She found Bill's radio and sat listening to oldies songs from the twentieth century all night.
The morning dawned clear and bright and she mad her way down to the mess hall where the caterers were used to her odd eating hours and had breakfast waiting for her. By the time she was finished the others were coming in and she went to her room to shower and dress before checking out the notice board for the week's itinerary.
Today was weapons detailing and target range and the afternoon was tactics. Tomorrow began with recon and retrieval followed by integration and infiltration. Then Wednesday was an all day escape and evade exercise. Thursday had logistics and command with martial arts and hand to hand. Friday finished with the obstacle course.
It was a harsh week full of training that only Manticore would be able to expect its soldiers to pull off since they were used to such a gruelling schedule.
Max walked down to the armoury where she had her first test with Lydecker. The walk did her good, it cleared her head and allowed her to be focused and she felt almost confident as she sat down with the rest of the unit.
"When out in the field," Lydecker began "your survival may depend upon your knowledge and use of weapons, whatever is available. Behind me on these racks are over a hundred different weapons. You have one hour to identify as many of them and write their names on the piece of paper in front of you. After the hour is up I will be taking you one at a time to evaluate your maintenance and assembly of certain arms. Your hour starts now."
Max turned her paper over and let her expert vision scan the racks of weapons. Her hand made notes and her mind whirled; she had noticed that there were several that she had only ever seen in that book that Bill had bought for her first Christmas; Weapons and arms throughout the ages. She grinned at the look of bemusement on some of her teams faces as they glared at a wooden contraption that was an early form of the crossbow- a bow and arrow. She sent up a silent thanks to Bill and bent her head down.
The hour passed quickly and she was so pleased by the end, she felt that she had managed to identify all of the weapons. She knew that Lydecker had thrown in antiquated ones in order to catch them out and made them unsure, it was standard confuse and divide technique and she was proud to have recognised it.
There were fifteen of them in Unit 6 and she was the last called to the test room.
She handed her paper to Lydecker and he shut the door to the darkened room.
"Well 452, it's been a while since I saw you last."
"Yes Sir." His eyebrows rose as he scanned her paper
"It looks like you have 100% 452, care to tell me how?"
Max was ready for this "Extra reading during solitary sir." When they were in punishment detail they were allowed to visit Manticore's archives and library and she had indeed read a lot of what Manticore had to offer, she didn't even need to mention her contraband.
Lydecker nodded appeased "In front of you are three weapons, I want you to assemble them."
Max stared at the pieces in front of her, they were so jumbled it would take ages to work out what was what and where it belonged.
"Oh I should mention that there is a bomb hidden in the room times to go off in ten minutes time. You may only search for and deactivate the bomb once assembly is finished."
Max felt sick; he hadn't even told her what the pieces of metal on the table were supposed to be. It could be an ice cream maker for all she knew and a bomb in the room? It would take longer than ten minutes to decide what it was supposed to make let alone formulate and construct. There was no way that she would finish and then find the bomb and disable the damn thing, it was hopeless why the hell did he set such a…FOCUS.
The voice in her head clamped down on her escalating panic. Panic will not help, what you need to do is prioritise. First ascertain if there are instructions for the damn thing.
"Are there schematics sir?"
Lydecker nodded and reached into his pocket "Available only upon request." He told her.
With the schematics it was a matter of seconds to separate the pieces and it took only 3 minutes to assemble the three weapons. She placed them down and turned in a slow circle taking in all of the parameters of the room.
The stack of boxes was the most likely place for a bomb but if they were pressure sensitive then moving them wouldn't be a good idea, there was a panel on that wall that could be hiding a small A class bomb and then again there was the cupboard over there.
Think. Urged her brain.
The bomb is likely to be activated, as that would lend credence to the test. Therefore if she hadn't asked for the schematics and not finished in time then Lydecker would need access to it quickly to deactivate it which meant... She turned to face her nemesis. He was wearing a thick winter coat. It might have been suitable for outside but the armoury was well air conditioned and quite warm. She could see beads of sweat forming on his forehead.
"Could you unbutton your coat please Sir?"
Lydecker smiled to her surprise and unbuttoned his coat.
Strapped to his waist was a bomb, standard fair with three coded wires and a clock to run down the time. She moved forward and took a knife off the table. As she moved closer to him she realised that this was the closest she had ever been to him and he smelled faintly of pine needles and citrus, it unnerved her to have her commander humanised and so she snipped the black wire and moved away quickly.
"Excellent 452, not only was your timing in the top percentile but you were one of only three who asked for schematics first hand and the only one who didn't search the obvious places for a bomb and gave it some thought. These are good traits for a commander. Asking for information, precision, quick thinking and thinking outside the box. Join your team mates at the rifle range for target practice." He ordered and she walked away her head spinning with the praise.
The rifle range had been a cake walk for Max. She had always been a great shot, often even outclassing Zack who she took turns challenging. When Eva had been shot by Lydecker she hadn't even wanted to look at the things but her common sense screamed at her that one day it might be the difference between success and failure and she was glad that she had listened to herself. Even the instructors had been impressed with her aim.
The afternoon started out with the instructor- a man called C.J, telling them what was going to happen.
"Tomorrow's recon and retrieval exercise will depend mostly on what we achieve here today. We have commandeered a civilian facility for the simulation but be assured that we are treating this as a real command. The hotel Cicero has several valuable disks held in a safe on the third floor which is heavily guarded. Your job is to plan the best route to retrieve those disks; everyone must make a plan which will be put through a simulator and the best one; the most strategically advanced will be implemented in tomorrow's training exercise. The second part of this test is a roundtable discussion on war time tactics."
Max sighed great she had to rely on her "team" again.
Although she had placed in command many times and her unit had often come to expect that she would be C.O or even second in command it hadn't changed their feelings towards her or her telling them what to do. No matter the fact that none of the missions that she had been in charge of had failed, they still refused to take her seriously or treat her with the respect that's he felt she deserved. No matter what she had been through, mostly at their hands, she still didn't rate in their radar.
You'd think that all the time she spent with Bulli as his 2IC then they would get along more right? Ha as if.
She looked own at her plan. It seemed strategically advantageous to her. Ideally it would require a full day's recon to map out guard shifts and escape routes, the guards had provided them with blueprints and shift rotations due to the lack of time. Not that she didn't trust the information that the guards had given her but it would just like Lydecker to feed them faulty Intel to throw them off or prove to them that they weren't ready yet. So in her plan they did extra recon, they hadn't been given a specific time limit and that meant that a night time mission would be more feasible, and everyone knows that cover of darkness is best. Besides Lydecker seemed to want them to think rather than just react.
Like the morning the afternoons session went so fast that it seemed like minutes rather than hours to when the trainer was reading through their papers.
"522." Silt stood up.
"Sir?"
"Your master plan is to come from the back?"
There were a few sniggers from the room and Silt blushed.
"Element of surprise."
"Undoubtedly." The trainer raised an eyebrow "For you, sensor alerts, dogs, overlapping guard rotations and electrified fences- did you even read the blueprints? Sir down." He said in disgust.
Silt flopped to his seat ignoring the chuckles of his ever caring team mates.
"261." Bulli rose to his feet quickly "Good basic tactical plan, morning's recon afternoon retrieval during shift change. Back up at key exit points and diversionary team in place. Well thought out."
Bulli grinned and sat down his back straight with pride.
Next it was Simper's turn "So you think that infiltration based on fifteen teenagers dressed as janitors?"
Simpers mouth opened and closed "Sir."
"And obviously the visual retina scans don't put you off at all." he rolled his eyes.
"452." Max stood to attention.
"We informed you of guard rotations and yet you decided that a full day's recon is needed?"
Max heard the sniggers turn into laughs.
"Yes sir." She said clearly "You didn't inform us of the reliability of your sources. A good commander does not send in troops on second hand data or rely on anonymous Intel. Sir."
The laughs stopped as the trainer looked her over appraisingly.
"Correct private. It is vital to ascertain the validity of intelligence. However assume that this is reliable."
"I stand by my plan Sir. Teams of recon would help us to make sure the guards do not change their rotations, that there is not a special event which could compromise our mission. Hotels have many special parties, weddings, conferences. Teams of recon masquerading as school parties would be able to keep us informed as well as being able to map out any entrances and exit points that may have been blocked during the day. The night would also provide the cover needed to get in and out with minimal interference and civilian casualties."
The trainer seemed speechless for a brief moment.
"That it would 452. Your plan is the best I have heard all month. Yet I have certain time parameters that you were unaware of. Night time missions are not part of this exercise and so we will go with 261's plan of action for tomorrow. Mission briefing at 0600 hours. Until then we have our roundtable discussion. Now can anyone tell me-?"
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Quick update for everyone this time.
Angel21- thanks hows that for quick?
Fan- coming thick and fast
Sigma1- here ya go… bounce freely
Raven- You made me blush!!! Girl I love your reviews, glad to know what I'm doing right. Here's more for your hint.
Jessica- Alec will…but not just yet.
Kitty- You review and I update- cute how that works ain't it??
Jenna- Glad you think so, Max's team had to win- she rocks. Anyway yes Alec will be in the story… eventually
BlueAngel- I alllllways keep my promises…except when I don't frown anyway I hope this chapter led the direction we are hopefully going…
Elfie- Yup Vampire X7's scary! More answers- I love music so getting Max to sing was just me being silly- but thanks to your Q I added an extra bit to the sequel which ROCKS of I do say so myself- you have been updated to muse Elfie!!! Bill is adorable, its true. Jace scarpered with the rest of them so she's not there. This is still Wyoming- as mentioned in this chapter. Max does her homework like a good little soldier and yeah she has done the same with the instructors and stuff- get to see more of that soon. Ooh now there's a thought- poor Brain I forgot about him…what to do? Sorry but no, I have no room for him right now. Maybe in the sequel (yes there is one.)
Dokushoka79- Aww cheers pet, I used to love stories like that too. Enid Blyton and Tamora Pierce my faves. Glad its taking you back. Matchbox 20 is a great choice too (Disease- the Logan virus…LOL.) See description of Max now!!! You ask and I deliver.
GivenAlias- Not a B. Short and sweet totally not like me...this was longer- enjoy!
Majic- I missed DA too, sad that it was cancelled. I will post as long as people want it!
Lyndsay-No probs- even quicker update!