With You – Chapter Six
Disclaimer – If I owned them, either Dark Angel would still be on the air or Jensen would make a grand return to Days Of Our Lives. But that's not gonna happen!
A/N: Okay, after some adjustments and editing tips, I think this chapter is ready to go! And I have some good news for any anti-Logan people out there, he might be making a return in the next chapter, but only for Alec to tell him who's in charge. I promise I won't be nice to the all powerful, stuck up preppy rich kid who needs to get a real life and leave Max alone for once.
***
Max stares for a few more moments as Alec looks at her in wonder. Unable to tear her eyes off his strongly defined muscles and the way they ripple with every movement, realization hits and she averts her eyes to a stain on the floor.
Chuckling to himself, Alec grabs a shirt off the bed and proceeds to pull it over his head, watching as Max contemplates whether or not to move her gaze upward and back into his eyes.
"Max, you wanted something?"
Max reluctantly pulls her eyes off the stain that gained a remarkable amount of interest in the past ten seconds and stares him directly in those alluring hazel eyes, hesitating to speak while she restrains a hand from reaching out and running through that irresistible tousled blonde hair of his.
"Right…"
'Stop it! Quit ogling his deliciously defined chest through his tee-shirt and his attractive face and do what you came here to do!'
"Um, Dix scrounged up some information on Sandeman."
At this Alec comes back from wondering why Max is acting so strangle all of a sudden and gives her his full attention.
"Do you know where he is?"
"Somewhere in Colorado. That's all we've got so far."
"Is there anything else?"
"Word on the street says Lydecker is on to him."
"So all we need to do is find Deck and then we've got our 'founding father' all in one shot."
Alec curls his lip in speculation, already coming up with ideas for infiltrating Sandeman's hideout, all the while making Max hope she can go get a cold shower and cleanse these thoughts circulating through her mind right down the drain.
Alec goes to a laptop sitting on a table in the corner of his room.
"Meet me at HQ in an hour. I need to check something out first and then we can go over the details with Mole and Dix."
"All right."
Exiting his room and walking into hers, Max walks to the full-length mirror on the wall and watches as the flushed face in the mirror stares back.
'What the hell is wrong with me?'
The face in the mirror gives off a look, almost as if trying to say the answer is right in front of Max's face. Or in other words, just beyond the wall behind her.
'Alec. That is what is wrong with me.'
Ever since they moved into the same place in this toxic city she has grown closer to him. Though still acting the same pain in the ass, smart alecky guy he was when they crossed cells back at Manticore, all the extra time spent with him since then has caused an adoration to grow for the same mannerisms that bugged the hell out of her before.
No, it's as if she can't get enough of his smart ass remarks. Seeing herself in the mirror drifting from consciousness and back into the world of lusting for Alec and she quickly snaps back to the task at hand.
Going to the far corner of her bedroom, Max sits on the floor with knees pulled close and arms wrapped around them. She finds herself doing this more and more lately now that there was so much responsibility riding on her shoulders.
This time, however, she has something more personal to worry about. Sandeman. The one person who has the ability to possibly cure the retrovirus Manticore has cooked up inside of her. He can answer a lot of questions she has been pondering over on the off time at night when shark DNA kicks in, bringing the ever so familiar insomnia back once again.
She removes her arm from her knees and rolls up the sleeve of her tattered but stylish blue B.U.M. sweatshirt and reveals the runes that keep showing up all over her body.
They baffle everyone who looks at them, including herself, especially when Alec insists on seeing them for further observations, but she knows they are a message from Sandeman. Dix's words ring clearly through her memories, saying that the runes are written in ancient Minoan.
She knows they have some sort of message but what that message is remains unknown. Memories of the exact moment that she was standing in Jam Pony during the day this war began return. She remembers Logan telling her what he had decoded thus far.
"When the shroud of death covers the face of the earth, the one whose power is hidden will deliver the helpless."
Whatever that means.
She looks at the irony of it all. She has spent a few years working as a bike messenger, and now she must 'deliver the helpless.'
She resolves that no matter what it takes, she will find Sandeman. For Eva and Jack, neither of whom got to see what the real world is like. For Tinga, who died trying to protect her family. For Ben, who just couldn't understand why things happened so unlike they did while they were at Manticore. For Zack, because he can't play big brother and try to protect all of them full time.
In the beginning she was the baby sister and everyone would lend a helping hand when it was needed the most, but now she is older. Now the tables have turned and it's Max's turn to protect her family and the rest of humanity as well, even though humanity refuses to accept this transgenic family because of what they are.
***
Joshua's boots thud against the decaying hall floor as he leads Kay and Luke to their new abode. He stops in front of a maple wood door with a tarnished number 34 on the front. Digging through his pockets until he finds the key Mole tossed to him just before they left HQ, he unlocks the door with a slight click. It swings open and they proceed to walk through at the same brisk pace they arrived there with.
Joshua cracks a huge smile across his dog-like face and motions with his long paw around the room saying, "Welcome home!"
Luke walks in, checking out the aged sofa and plopping himself down in an almost forced motion. Neither he nor Kay are used to acting like individuals. Free human beings that don't have to wake up at the crack of dawn every morning for drill practices or be confined to a locked down cell every night.
Kay goes to a sliding glass door that leads to a balcony and fire escape. She goes to the edge, looking out over Oak Street at the various barrels burning through the crisp Seattle night air.
A few transhumans are sitting in the alley below the balcony, armed with rifles they probably obtained from Sector Police who were lurking around the perimeter of the city and never expected genetically engineered pickpockets to snatch their guns and ammo right off of their uniforms.
Kay turns with bewilderment to Luke, who is sitting on the couch with his hands rested on his lap, not quite sure of what to do next.
"Come look!"
Luke arrives at her side, scanning the street and the view down the alley just as Kay had done moments before.
Joshua rushes across the room excitedly and joins the duo as they notice the "freak flag" flying in the breeze.
"You like?" Joshua asks, looking out over the building next to them.
"It's so… different from everything at Manticore," Kay says, leaning closer to Luke.
Joshua points at a gate guarded by a few of the X Series soldiers beyond the corner of the opposite building.
"That's the North exit. Leads into the back streets of Seattle. Only upstairs people use that exit," Joshua says, using "upstairs people" to refer to the X Series instead of regular people as he usually does.
"Upstairs people?" Kay asks, looking curiously at Joshua.
"People like you, and Max, and Alec. People who look like ordinaries."
Luke nods his head in a fluid motion, assuring Joshua that he understands.
A transhuman with shaggy hair and protruding teeth, which looks as if he has too much rodent DNA in his cocktail, appears in the open doorway.
"Hey Joshua, you busy?"
Joshua spins, flipping his long mane of tangled hair in the process, and peers at the rodent boy.
"You need me?" Joshua asks reluctantly, wanting to stay and visit with his new X6 pals.
"Mole and the guys are having a disagreement. We could use your insight on the topic. Do you want to help?"
"Sure," he replies, and whips back around to face Kay and Luke, "Gotta blaze."
Before they can say their good-byes, Joshua bounds out the door, on the heel of the other transhuman.
Kay and Luke return to looking out over the balcony at all that their new home life has to offer them. Luke remembers something he had seen one of the X5s demonstrating in the Rec room after seeing a movie during the down time of a solo mission, and wraps his comforting arm around Kay's shoulders. She looks into his face, grinning at the mischievous smirk he is showing off, and snuggles closer into his warm embrace.
***
Max looks at her pager and notices the time illuminating through the dim light of her room. Eight o' clock. Exactly one hour after Alec set to work diligently on his computer and told her to meet him at HQ.
She climbs up off the floor and stretches, her mind working to its genetically enhanced ability to make some sort of sense out of all the scenarios that ran through her mind in the past hour.
She keeps resting on the last time Sandeman was almost in her grasp. How it had been a set up. Max can't help but wonder what happened to CJ after he used himself as a decoy so she could drive out of that place in the truck full of kidnapped transgenics. White and his cult whackos are capable of anything. She had a first-hand demonstration of that.
She clips her pager back onto the belt loop of her pants and heads out the door. Notes to herself that Alec has already left. She never can figure out what to expect from him when he snaps back into 494, soldier mode.
His alter ego. Just as hers is 452. 494 isn't anything like the smart ass front Alec puts up. 494 has been plagued by the torture held within the confines of the Psy Ops ward of the same institution she ran from.
'I wonder if it was 494 or Alec who was assigned as my breeding partner?'
Since meeting her genetic clone, she realizes what the rest of her unit, and their clones in other facilities, the ones that were left behind like rejected garbage lying along the street, had to go through because twelve X5s decided they wanted to get a taste of the real world and ditched the place they called home for the first ten years or so of their lives.
Max clears these thoughts from flashing before her eyes as she continues her stride down the hall. Promising herself that to make it up to them, she will find Sandeman and do her best to protect Terminal City.
Mole looks up as Max wanders into the headquarters, an almost blank expression coated on her face like paint.
"Hey Max, nice of you to join us," he says in a playful manner, tempting the fires she keeps pent up day in and day out; a game he and Max play more and more often on the less stressful days.
Alec looks up from a report sent to them by an X5 contact drifting through the streets outside TC, unknown to the ordinaries going about their normal lives.
"What did you guys come up with while I was gone?" Max asks, taking a seat on a wobbly stool next to Mole and right across from Alec.
Alec raises his hand to his stomach and proceeds to scratch. Max would gladly handle that itch for him. Her face burns a red hot color and she awkwardly turns to looking at Mole, anything to keep from stomach flopping.
"If we want to get there in time, we'll have to move out tonight. Tomorrow morning before daybreak at the latest. For safety reasons the good doctor changes his location biweekly."
Max looks down at the report Alec tossed across the table, reading but yet staring, deep in thought.
"I'm thinking we'll be needing a team of about eight, maybe ten, tops, besides you and me, to pull this off successfully," Alec says, looking to Max for her approval.
"Sounds good to me," she answers with an airy voice. "Who do you have in mind?" She looks up from the report as Alec goes to ramble off the first names that come to mind.
"Ryan and Joey, Aletha, Krit, Syl, Zane, Jondy…"
"How about those two X6s who showed up earlier? They seemed like good enough soldiers to me, fresh off the streets. Meaning most of their Manticore training will still be fresh in their minds."
"Oh yeah, 182 and 148, wasn't it? I remember seeing those two back at Manticore. They were the top of their unit."
"Now we just need two more for backup." Max gazes around the room, trying to come up with two more soldiers who are fit for the task.
"Why not 357 and 894?" Alec asks, flashing back to the two X5s sparring in the streets the other night.
"If you think they can handle it, then sure."
"Trust me, they can handle it," Alec beams, grinning from ear to ear.
"That settles it then. We've got our team."
***
HUGE thanks to all my reviewers! Hope you guys have a great Easter!!
RitoGirl04 ~ Who wouldn't drift off when Alec is in the room? Hehe, I'm glad you enjoyed it!
SockBrain ~ Thanks again for all the help in editing this, you're the best! I'm definitely gonna keep my word and never, never, be nice to Logan. Alec will always rule the day.
SGOU ~ Yep, Max having feelings for Alec and no Logan, it's like every fans dream, isn't it? Wow, a lot of questions! Zane's part in the story is going to be really important later, and starting in the next chapter it begins to progress with another mysterious phone call. You'll just have to wait and see who he's working for, though :) White's new recruit will also be making an appearance in the next chapter as well, and just like Zane he's going to play a major role in whether this mission goes sideways or not. Glad you liked it so far!
GivenAlias ~ More shirtless Alec it is then! I'm totally on the same page with you about Logan, he's not an important role so it's best to do away with him as fast as possible. But then again, when he's around there's always the potential for Alec's smart ass remarks to make Eyes Only seem like a worthless piece of trash. Thanks for the review!
RGAP-48 ~ I think it's pretty easy to drift from Logan to Alec, lol. Logan is nothing but a pain in the ass, and not in the same way as Alec. I'm glad you liked the ending, I'm hoping to add some more sort of like that in other chapters ;)