Everyone at the table, whether or not they participated in the argument, is led to private cells.

Max is taken back to the room she was tortured in, by her three favorite X5s.  She is tied to the same chair, but she doesn't fight it this time.  The fear twisting around in her, clawing at her insides, is too great to overcome.  She's losing her self because Alec thinks she's a traitor.  But she didn't have to respond!  She can't believe how they all lost control.

The door opens very slowly.  Lydecker walks in at a leisurely pace, but his face is scrunched up in disappointment.  "452," he says.  "Do you know how frustrating it is to see so much hard work and money going down the drain, and all because you won't forget the outside?"

Max is nearing the end of consciousness as she knows it.  She isn't so scared of Lydecker anymore.  He can take no more from her than he is about to anyway.

"I feel sorry for you," she tells him, "I really do.  To have all your pathetic little dreams crushed because I won't obey.  You failed.  You created people, not soldiers, and there is nothing you can do about it."

She can feel his iron mask dent with the weight of her accusation.  He shakes his head.  "You failed.  You are the failure.  You are nothing."

It echoes in her mind like a far off dream.  But it fades and she knows he is wrong.  "Zack was your best soldier, and he betrayed you.  Because he knows more than you taught him.  Because he is better than you."

Lydecker takes this blow harder than the last.

"You are nothing—just a sad little man with his sad little empire.  You are nothing without us."

His face splits with rage and fear and something she can't identify, and then his fist connects with her face.  Max can feel the blood coming from her lip.

"This is my blood," she says.  "This is Max's blood, and it means more than yours.  Her life means more than yours, because you are an ordinary, and she is a transgenic.  Because she is superior to you."

The pressure she applies causes his will to groan with the strain.  But he pulls himself together, and throws off the doubts she has placed on him.  "Your reprogramming," he tells her, curling his tongue around the word, "starts in one hour.  Enjoy the last few minutes of independent thought."

He turns to the three X5s standing at attention.  "X5-399, you'll stay with 452."  The butch woman nods at him.  "I fear the others may fall victim to her female wiles."  Even though the male soldiers keep their faces impassive, Max can tell they feel insulted.  But they leave with Lydecker when he commands it.

Max sits in her chair, and feels the despair crawling up inside of her.  X5-399 stares stiffly at a wall behind Max.

"399," she says after a minute.  "You're the one that looked a me before.  Why?"

She doesn't respond, just keeps looking at nothing.

Max tries again.  "You seem to be on permanent guard duty, but you don't seem like the others—brainwashed, I mean."

399's eyes flick to Max for a second, before she resumes her impassive staring.

"Why aren't you in the regular unit?  Why aren't you with the rest of the X5s?"  Max pulls at 399 with a penetrating gaze.  "What is different about you?"

After much struggling, 399's eyes lock with her own.  "On my twelfth mission," she says, in a voice fractured with disuse, "I was CO of my team.  I made a bad call, and they all got killed.  Manticore is not so very kind to those who make bad calls."

Max feels herself returning the sympathetic look that 399 gave her long ago.  "That's so horrible."

399 shrugs.  "It's not so bad.  I'm not put in situations where I have to make decisions that affect other people's lives.  It's liberating not having that kind of responsibility."

"399," Max says, "Can you help me get out of here?"

"Why?  From what I hear, the world is full of choices and consequences and affects.  It's unfortunate that you have to be reprogrammed, but it might actually work out better for you."

"But..." Max tries, desperation crushing her hope, "But I like my choices.  I like my freedom.  It's what I live for!  Don't let them take it from me!"

399 is not convinced.  "If I help you, I'll being going against Manticore, against Lydecker," she says, conflicted.

"Please," Max cries, "Please help me!  I have friends on the outside, people I love that miss me and worry.  I have a name—Max—and an identity.  I am someone, and you can't let them strip it away from me!"

399 just watches her, and Max crosses her fingers and prays to the Blue Lady like she has never prayed before.  She wonders why she does it anyway—when has the Blue Lady ever come through for her, for any of them?  Nevertheless, she begs for a second chance on the outside.

And then 399 nods, and undoes her bonds.

"Thank you, thank you," Max says breathlessly, getting out of the chair that confined her while Lydecker taunted her and Doctor Kruchev tortured her.  She stops as she comes to the door, and turns back to face 399.  "Do you know where my friend Jondy, 210, is?"

"She's in the East Wing, Section B, in one of the cells.  She took longer to break than you, so she's still in isolation.  Your other friends, the ones from the main X5 unit, plus an X6, are there, too."

"Thank you," Max says softly.  "I'm going to call you Hope, because you gave me hope when I had none."

She runs through the halls, aged memories of this place finding their way to her.  There is an emotion bursting forth inside of her, but she cannot tell what it is.  She wonders if it is hope, or if it is fear.

And all she can think about is that the Blue Lady has saved her.  That the Blue Lady really does protect them.

She finds Section B of the East Wing, and notices that all the doors have sophisticated locks on them, locks that she has no chance of opening.

She silently slinks to the control center of Section B.  Pressing herself against the wall, she peers though the door at the security guard slouching in his chair.  There is a wall of monitors in front of him, and she wonders how he doesn't know she's here, but then she notices the Gameboy in his hand and stifles a laugh.  She's not getting caught because the guard likes Tetris.

She sneaks behind him slowly, then knocks him out before he knows she is there.  She quickly grabs his game, pauses it, and sets it in front of him.  She snatches a couple card keys from his pocket and is back in the hall within seconds.

She glances in the window of the first iso chamber, but finds Sinclair instead of Jondy.  He startles when he sees her, but jumps up as she opens the door.

"Take this," Max says, handing him a spare key card.  "They seem to open all the doors.  You get the rest out, and I'll get Jondy."

He takes it silently, and then follows her command.  Max looks in each chamber as she blurs past, until she spots Jondy hunched over in one of them.

When she opens the door, Jondy doesn't respond.  She just sits lifelessly in a corner, hugging herself.  Max approaches her slowly, suddenly unsure of what to do.

"Jondy?" she asks.  "Jondy, are you okay?"

After a minute, Jondy swings her dull gaze up at Max.  "Jondy, it's me, Max."  Max receives a blank stare, and she feels as though her heart is being bashed against a rock.  "Jondy, I'm Max.  You know, X5-452, your sister."  Max turns and parts her hair, exposing her barcode to Jondy.

Jondy's eyes remain stagnant and empty.

"Oh god," Max cries.  "Jondy, I need you right now!  We don't have time for you not to remember me."  Jondy turns away from Max's pain.

Max cannot stop the tears that steadily form.  She's wiping away the rivers of grief when Alec and X6-126 appear in the doorway.  X6-126 is hanging on to Alec's arm, her earlier fear forgotten.

The room is dark, and her head is bowed, so Alec doesn't see her tears.  He tells her, "Max, I gave her a name.  Lark—you know, like the songbird.  Anyway, the rest of the X5s here want to leave, they understand why you left now.  Not that they didn't, but—Max, why are you crying?"

Max cannot control her breathing anymore.  "Jondy isn't Jondy.  She's 210," Max says, her voice hitching.

Alec softens, and Lark cautiously approaches Max.  When she is close enough, she slowly reaches down and grabs Max's hand with her own.  "Maxie," she says in that sweet, lyrical voice of hers.  "Maxie, it's time to go.  Don't you want to go home?"

A dream-like tranquility takes hold of her, and she pulls herself up and gives Lark a very soft hug.

Then she turns to Jondy, and carries her out of the cell.

The hall is shadowed, and carries the same cold, clinical air as the rest of Manticore.  But it's safe, for now, and the rest of the X5s are gathered here, shifting anxiously, eyes twitching.  "You really want to get out of here?" Max asks as she sets Jondy down.

Sinclair and Mindra and Lark and Rage and Alec and Gemini and Selena and Adrian and Chandresh and Panther and Sita and an unnamed soldier who Max knows to be X5-704 and Spunky all nod.  But Leo does not.

"It's a pretty big risk, escaping," he says.  "I mean, what if we get captured on our way out, or a while later, or whenever, and we're back here, but as prisoners."

Max remembers being recaptured, and then tortured, and then in iso when she almost went insane from the silence, and then in the classroom where she lost herself.  She remembers the fog, and the numb, and her fractured identity.  She looks at Jondy, who stares vacantly back.  But through this sadness, she remembers the outside, and Original Cindy, and her job, and Normal, and Sketchy, and Crash, and Jeremy.

"It is so worth it," she says.  "Freedom is worth all of that. 'They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.'  Or so says Benjamin Franklin."

Leo, with the shaggy hair that earned him the name, feels his resolve begin to crack.  "But..." he says, "it doesn't seem like the wisest plan, to escape.  They can follow right behind us, and catch us and..." he let his sentence trail off, unwilling to speak of the consequences.

"Look," Max says, and ideas race through her head.  "What about if we don't just escape, but hurt them while we do it?"  She's enthusiastic about this plan, and wonders why she never thought of it before.

"Yeah," Alec chimes in, gesturing wildly as he speaks.  "If we blew up the DNA lab, things would fall apart here in a long-term sense, and it would distract them for the short term."

Max feels excitement swell up inside of her.  She spends a moment gazing at each of the X5s, remembering what she's seen of their fighting during basic training.  Then she tries to recall Zack as she puts on her most commanding voice.  "Sinclair, Adrian, Alec, and Panther—you're with me.  Mindra, take the rest and get out of here.  We'll meet in you in Seattle in a place called Jam Pony, in sector 5."

Mindra, who has always avoided confrontation, chooses now to assert herself.  "I'm going with you."

Max doesn't have to respond, though, because, Sinclair gives Mindra a severe enough look for the both of them.  "Mindra," he says, and it seems he's always known her by that.  "Mindra, I love you, and you are a wonderful person.  You really understand people, and you are kind, and allow us to be ourselves.  But you are not a warrior.  You are a watcher, a healer, a helper, a lover.  And I do not want you to get hurt."

Mindra both softens and hardens with his speech.  Her eyes, normally so sad and ever watching, become sharp green ice.  "Don't tell me what to do.  I'm coming with you.  And you can't stop me."

Max walks up to Mindra.  She stares into those icy holes, her own eyes powerful.  "Mindra," she says, kind but firm.  "We need you to lead them out.  You know these people—their personalities, their strengths, their weaknesses, their fears.  You are the best one to help them take their freedom."

Against the force of both Sinclair and Max, and even a little bit of herself, Mindra yields.

Rage is playing absently with her uncomprehendingly blonde hair, bored with the emotional turmoil.  "Rage," Max tells her, "You're in charge of Lark.  Make sure she gets out of here, and stays safe."  Then Max turns to Chandresh.  "You are in charge of Jondy," she says, gesturing toward her dazed friend.  "You'll have to carry her, but you're strong, and I'm sure you'll be fine."  He looks like he wants to protest, but he is good at following orders, and so he doesn't.

Mindra has led them down several corridors when she finds what she's looking for.  An observation room, with a bay of windows facing the training area.  This is where Lydecker goes to observe them.  He sickens her.

She gestures silently, and the X5s kick the glass until it shatters.

Mindra stands at the edge, peering warily down.  The room is two stories up, and despite secure knowledge of transgenic feats, fear still courses through her blood.  She glances back at the others, especially Lark and Jondy, and then does a swan dive out of the building.

There isn't snow like there was with the '09 escape—or so she hears—but the ground is soft from an earlier rain.  She turns back to watch the others.  Most dive out in a similar fashion, but Chandresh drops Jondy into the waiting arms of Leo and 704 before he makes a leap.  And Rage jumps feet first, with Lark clutching tightly to her.  Her legs buckle when she hits the ground, but Lark is unharmed.

It's dark outside, pitch black if it weren't for the spotlights waving around.  Mindra gives Rage a moment to recover, and then signals for them to run.  They've barely gained momentum, though, when an alarm—the alarm—goes off.

The blaring is so sharp that Jondy can feel it cut away at her, slicing at the haze as it goes.  She feels heavy footsteps under her, and even though they are not hers, she can remember doing this before.  She was cold, with the snow and the naked soles and the bare head.  Max must have been cold, she thinks, freezing in the icy water.

But she can't think about that moment without the guilt that falls upon her.  It knocks into her, and she is jarred into a place where the fog is not so thick.

She remembers that Max didn't judge her, not about leaving her for dead, or about loving Jeremy, or about lying to Jeremy.  And then she remembers the man that she loved, that loved her, that kept her from despairing about her family.  He taught her everything she knows about mechanics.

Her love for him, her refusal to leave him, kept her from breaking.  It gave her something solid to hold onto, no matter what.

And now it pulls her from the fog, and she wonders who this is that is carrying her.

Panther runs ahead of the group with a stride that resembles her namesake.  She knows exactly where to go, so unlike the rest, she's not weighed down by explosives.

A quick turn right, a quick turn left, a dash down a long corridor; a subdued guard here, a knocked out X7 there.

And then they come across their means of revenge on the life-giving, soul-sucking, freedom-taking Manticore.  Their home, their enemy, and everything in between.  Panther doesn't know if she can do this—destroy everything she's ever known for a possibly mythical place called "the outside."  But Max is in charge now, and she will follow her anywhere.

When inside, Max and Alec, hearts pounding almost in unison, start to set up the plastic explosives.  But Max stops when she sees her barcode.

"It's me," she says.  "And there's Zack, and Brin, and Tinga.  And you, Alec, and Ben, and Jondy, and the rest.  We're all here."

"Max," Panther says, and it's the first time she's spoken to her.  "We have a job to do.  We've got to get out of here."

Max nods, and collects herself.  "Are you okay?" Alec asks.

"Yeah."  But as she lifts her arm to place the next explosive, a noise that reminds her of a soul ripping apart fills her head, and she wonders if it is her heart finally giving out.  She realizes it's an alarm, and shouts, "Hurry," to the rest.

Panther guards the door as Sinclair and Adrian quickly wire it.  "Let's go," Sinclair yells.

They run through the halls, minds blurring, alarms blaring, lives flashing before their eyes.  Suddenly, Panther stops.  She pulls out a remote, and her hand hovers nervously over the large red button.  She can do this.  No she can't.  She can do this.  Oh my god, no she can't.

"Panther," Max hisses, "Do it now!"

The explosion echoes through the halls, and Max almost cries out in happiness.  It reverberates through all of them, and they absorb it for a moment before reestablishing their frantic pace.

Outside, spotlights cut through the dark, sending shivers through the X5s avoiding them.  They dash frantically toward the forest, toward the fence, toward freedom.  Max feels a bitter taste in her mouth she knows is adrenaline, and she thanks Manticore for giving her the abilities she needs to take them down.

She can hear the soldiers, and the hummers, and the panic ringing in her ears, but she can see snow, too, and so she can't tell how much of it is in her head.

As she ducks through the dense, earthy trees of the forest, she hears four other hearts beating and ragged breathing and wishes to go home.  She wonders what Original Cindy is doing.  She wouldn't be at work now, but it's too early to go home.  She's probably at Crash, kickin' it with some lickety-boo, playing pool, having too much fun to worry about Max.

But Max knows that Original Cindy would notice her disappearance, and worry, and the lickety chick would have to find some other girl to hang with.

The crunching of dead leaves under the thick soles of combat boots alerts the group of potential escapees to the X7s on their tail.  Max's body blurs, faster and faster in time with her pulse and her fear and a raw, primal anger that clings to her chest.  X7s are faster than X5s.  The steps become louder and louder, as rapid as machine gunfire, staccato and rhythmic and pounding against them.

They break into a clearing, which clues them in that they are almost there.  Freedom so close that it reaches out to the willing, anxious, longing souls.  And then the X7s break into the clearing, and one of them fires, and a bullet brings Panther down.

Max almost breaks, torn between the unrestrained liberty of the outside, and the fellowship among X5s.  She pauses—stay or go, stay or go.

Adrian rushes back to Panther, leans over her, hugs her to his chest, but it's too late, she's gone.  He holds her and cries and X7s surround him, their faces youthful and savage and stone cold.

The X5s attack.  Max lunges at one, almost falling when she realizes this is Zack's clone.  Zack who led the first escape.  But she knows it's not him for the malevolence in his eyes, and tackles him.  Pining him down, she punches recklessly at his face, fist connecting with young flesh, bones cracking under her blows.

She flips off of him, and gives Jondy's clone a kick in the stomach that sends her flying back into the trees.  She grabs the wrist of an arm thrusting at her, and snaps it between her fingers.  There is something ancient and feral, ruthless and unrefined about her fighting, about her.  Something that is neither Max nor 452, but the animal within her, the animal that Manticore tried to tame and control and manipulate, but it would not be dominated.

She remembers the blood lust from that day, with the convict, with the Nomlie that they tore apart.  The luscious red life drying into death on her hands.

And then all the X7s are down, and Max feels dizzy, and Panther's dying by her feet, and the blades of a helicopter cut through the air with choppy precision, and she thinks of the death in her life—of 421, of the convict, of Jack, of Eva, of Lyle's identity, and of Lydecker's soul. 

"We've got to go," Alec says, his voice full of panic and strength and Max knows why he is 2IC.  "Come on Adrian—she's gone, she's gone.  Let's go."

But Adrian won't leave, because Panther is his sister in every way—from shared ancestry, to love, to protection, to connection.  Fragments of his heart fall onto Panther as he cries.  Fragments of his heart caused by the loss of her.

Sinclair grabs Adrian roughly, and pulls him to his feet.  "There's nothing we can do for her," he tells the grieving soldier, brother, friend.

And they run with all their might toward the perimeter fence—that tall web of wires that cages their hearts and cuts off their circulation.

As Max flies over it for the second time in her life, she realizes what she's known all along—that Manticore could never capture her soul, only her body, and that she has always been free.