In the Shadows
Part 3
By Gem
Music seeped up through the living room floorboards, coaxed from the old piano Alec had discovered in the basement months before. He'd taken 49614 down there to hear him play, in an effort to kill the remaining time before they could head back to Terminal City, hopefully doing something other than fighting with Max. For her part of the temporary truce Max had remained upstairs with Logan and Joshua, but she wasn't entirely happy with her decision. Actually she wasn't particularly happy with any decisions made thus far that day, as she told Logan about in length while he tried to decide why the piano music he was hearing sounded so familiar.
"I just don't understand how he can do this, Logan," she protested as she paced the length of the living room for what felt like the millionth time. "He spends all this time and all this money... money," she repeated emphatically, as though this was the hardest part to believe, "Alec spent money to find her, just so he can give her away to somebody else?"
Wound up in her own confusion, Max had forgotten that Joshua was not already privy to Alec's plans. Logan, however, had not, and scrambled for a way to redirect the conversation.
"Max, does that song Alec's playing sound familiar to you? I could swear I know it, but the name just isn't..."
"Alec give little monkey away?" Joshua asked, his eyes darting from Max to Logan and back again.
"He, uh, he's thinking of it, Joshua," Logan said gently. "He thinks maybe she would have an easier life if she grew up with a... well, a normal family. Normal as opposed to, say, a transgenic one." He wasn't sure if Joshua understood; the dog-man didn't always let on how much he was absorbing. "With the conditions in Terminal City being as... primitive... as they are, and people still being a little, well, leery about transgenics... he's not sure if it's fair to make her live with all that."
"Can you believe how stupid he's being?" Max appealed to Joshua. "He has this beautiful little girl who, since she doesn't know him, still thinks he walks on water, and he wants to give it all up. Like this kind of chance for a new life comes along every day."
Logan felt helpless in the face of her pain; nothing he'd said or could think of saying seemed to make a dent. It was almost as though Alec was rejecting her instead of his child, and Logan couldn't find the words to make her see that neither one was truly the case.
"I think that's the point, Max," he said, trying one more time even though he was no longer quite sure why. "He wants to give her the best chance he can, and he doesn't think that it rests with him. Even if I'm not sure he's right, I can't blame him for putting his own feelings aside to consider that path."
"Logan, you don't understand." She finally stopped pacing and stood before him, her dark eyes fixed on his face in desperate appeal. "Before he disappeared Lydecker told me that my mother didn't want to give me up; they had to take me from her. I don't know if he was telling me the truth but still... you don't know what that meant to me. You can't know. But this little girl, she's gonna grow up knowing her father had the chance to keep her and he didn't. He just," she turned her palms up in the air, "gave up."
Joshua looked anxiously at the staircase that led to the basement. He'd sensed something strange in the way that Alec looked at his little girl, something that made him seem sadder than he should, given the situation. Max's explanation should have made sense of Alec's mood, but Logan's idea was the one that took root.
"Alec need help," Joshua said. His brow furrowed with the effort to convert his thoughts into the words that came so much harder to him than the images he painted. "Alec need to see little monkey safe with him in Terminal City. Safe and happy," he stressed. "Then he let her stay."
Logan smiled at the determination in his voice, and the big heart that prompted it. He just wasn't sure it would be as simple as Joshua had pictured it.
"Maybe, Joshua, maybe," he allowed. "I think you've hit on the real key, though; Alec needs to know we're on his side." He looked hard at Max. "If we do nothing but yell at him, he'll simply stop listening."
"So this is all my fault now?" she exclaimed.
"That's not what I meant," Logan hastened to assure her. "I'm just saying that nothing irrevocable has happened yet. If we keep our cool and don't push him, maybe he'll realize on his own what the real right choice is."
"Great," Max grumbled. "So we're back to Plan A: hope that Alec can figure out right from wrong. Wind him up and watch him walk into walls."
"Maybe Brin help," Joshua suggested after a moment's puzzled reflection. "Alec talk to Brin; talk almost every night. Maybe he listen to Brin."
Her older sister's name was beginning to grate on Max's nerves. It wasn't that she minded Alec having other friends; she was totally cool with that. But it was hard to see how well Alec got along with Brin when her own relationship with her sister was so messed up. They seemed to connect on a level that Max couldn't get to; one she wasn't even invited to. And that hurt, more than she could tell either of them.
"You want Brin to lead him down the right path?" she scoffed. "Now there's the blind leading the blond. We might as well pack the munchkin's bags right now."
Joshua transferred his worried gaze from the staircase to Max as her words raised another concern. "No bags to pack yet."
"You just said a mouthful, Big Fella," Max sighed as she turned to stare out the front window.
* * * * *
The former executive suite of Raddon Biotechnology Inc., located on half of the 6th and final story of the Raddon Building, bustled with activity the like of which had not been seen there for over a decade. Mole's initial crew of volunteers had grown considerably; transgenics of all shapes, sizes and genetic markers moved swiftly from the executive secretary's spacious anteroom to the Director of Development's corner office, and then through a connecting door to the slightly smaller office of the former Director of Marketing. The offices of the Chief Financial Officer and Executive Vice President, once located on the opposite side of the executive secretary's sanctum, were unfortunately unavailable for remodeling thanks to a Molotov cocktail flung at the building during the siege.
Remnants of furniture were being carted from one office to the next, and occasionally out the door when it was determined the repair time would be too great. In the offices, now designated the master bedroom and the child's bedroom, hammers could be heard pounding away, trying to construct items such as beds and nightstands, things not commonly found for salvage in abandoned technology parks. Everywhere there were buckets of soapy water, and mops were being wielded with good will if not enthusiasm in the quest to remove more than 10 years worth of dust, dirt and biotoxins.
"Look alive, people," Mole barked as he strode through the center of the chaos. "We're at T minus 10 minutes and counting."
Brin stopped in the doorway to the secretary's office and stared in amazement. She had been helping at the other end of the spectrum, removing Alec's possessions from his current quarters, but that task hadn't been nearly as involved as this. What Alec lacked in terms of child furniture, and furniture in general, his friends were apparently building out of scraps and good intentions. Luckily for him, both were in good supply.
Her study was cut short when she was pushed into the room on the end of a two-by-four.
"Sorry," called a tall, vaguely feline woman as she brushed past with the plank held out like a lance.
"You here to gawk or to work?" Mole growled at Brin. "We're running out of time."
"I had to run out to get this for... her."
Mole smiled grimly as he inspected the small cylindrical lamp she held up before him. "Her, huh? Thought you knew her designation already. 'Course I haven't heard how you knew; bet that's a story all by itself."
Brin evaded his shrewd eyes; the explanations she had to make were meant for Alec's ears. "I... I thought she'd like this lamp," she said instead. "When we first escaped I stayed in this house and..."
"Yeah, great," Mole broke in. "Kid's room is over there." He waved at the Director's of Marketing's former home away from home and stalked into the new master bedroom to check on the progress of the window cleaning/repair.
Brin bit her lip as she looked down at the lamp. As a frightened child a lamp much like this had symbolized all the warmth and love that Manticore denied her, and she had wanted to share that feeling with Alec's daughter. But now, in light of all the activity going on around her, her small gesture seemed silly. Everyone else here was trying to construct a home, with practical things like beds and a table and...a piano?
"Where did you find a piano?" she asked Luke as she crossed the anteroom to examine the old upright. "Why did find a piano?" Suddenly she realized she might have made him feel just as insignificant as Mole had just made her, and she hastened to add, "I mean it's beautiful, but... why?"
Luke beamed as he stroked the dusty top of the piano. "She is a beauty, isn't she? For an old girl." He reached down and tapped one or two of the yellowed ivory keys. "Joshua said something once about Alec knowing how to play so we thought..."
"You thought," Mole interrupted as he passed through the anteroom on his way to the hallway.
Luke accepted the rebuke with a bashful smile. "I thought it might be a good idea to put one in here. It's not like we have anybody in Terminal City to give the little girl ballet lessons – not even the X-series ever infiltrated the Bolshoi... at least none that we know of. But piano lessons?" He shrugged the problem off as inconsequential. "Alec can do that. Then she'll be just like normal kids."
Brin couldn't help but smile back at him; he was so proud of the idea that they could offer 49614 the same things that a "normal" child, a non-genetically enhanced child not living in a toxic waste dump, might expect.
"But where did you find it? This used to be a technology park, right? Biotech engineering and genetic research companies. Who had a piano in their office?"
Now Luke looked slightly embarrassed, his normally pasty skin turning a dull shade of red as he indulged an obviously deep fascination with the C sharp key.
"I kind of spotted it a while ago in an old warehouse just south of Oak Street. I think they do bar supplies or something like that; at least they did. Anyhow, it didn't look like anyone was using it, so..."
"So you broke into the warehouse in broad daylight and stole a piano?" She wanted to sound casual about it; after all, she'd spent a lot of her years on the run scavenging and out-and-out stealing just to get by. But the idea of what Luke had risked, and why, stopped her cold.
"It's for a friend," Luke said with another shrug of his narrow shoulders. "And some of the guys helped too; it's not like I was walking around carrying a piano strapped to my back."
"But why are you doing this?" Brin made a wide sweep with her arm, gesturing not only to the anteroom but the offices beyond. "Why are all of doing this?"
For an answer, Luke copied her sweeping gesture. "Who do you see here? Mostly, I mean?"
Brin looked around her, at the transgenics washing blinds, and the ones taking out the garbage, and the ones building a bookcase against the far wall. She had an uneasy suspicion that she knew the answer Luke was looking for, but she chose the more politic response.
"I see Manticore."
Luke smiled, as though he hadn't really expected any other answer. "You see what the world thinks all trannies look like – freaks. But I see Alec's friends. Even though we're getting more X's every day, he doesn't hang with them a lot. He lives on our side of town, just like Max." He began polishing the top of the piano as he talked, trying to work the dust out of every crevice to restore the instrument to at least a portion of her former glory. "You X's are a funny lot, especially the X5's. A lot of you still think of us as the 'nomalies.' It's not your fault," he added kindly when he saw her automatically open her mouth to protest. "When you guys were bad, they threw you down in the basement with us. Now you're living with the bogeymen; it only figures you'd feel a little funny."
"We're all transgenics, Luke," she said firmly, quashing the memory of any misgivings she might have had when she first arrived in Terminal City and was greeted by an oversized lizard with an automatic weapon.
"See, that's the rest of you. You feel guilty for feeling funny, even though like I said, it's not really your fault."
"And Alec doesn't make you feel that way?" she asked curiously. She'd noticed that Alec seemed to spend a lot of time with Joshua and Mole and Dix, but she hadn't really spent any time thinking about why.
"Nah. See we freaks know that we all came from the same test tube; some of us just got spun a little faster in the centrifuge than others. Didn't matter to Manticore." Luke shrugged philosophically. "To them we were all just meat. Alec's one of the X's who knows it, too. He came out looking normal; most of us here," he gestured to the assembled transgenics again, "didn't. Just luck of the draw."
"Luck," she mused. "Now there's a word you didn't hear very often at Manticore."
Luke stopped polishing for an instant and looked up at her with something akin to pity in his eyes. "Manticore's gone. In the real world you make your own luck. Or," he finished with a little smile as he resumed his work, "you make it for a friend.
* * * * *
Otto hurried into his boss's office, a small yellow slip of paper clutched tightly in his hand. "Sir, we have a report that they're on their way back to Terminal City."
"Good, Otto; very good." White pushed his mouse to the side and rubbed his hands together briskly. The waiting, and all this damned paperwork it gave him time to do, was killing him, and both would get worse before they got better. But at least for the moment there was something he could do, some proactive steps he could take to spin things his way. "As soon as we're sure they're not going to come back because they forgot to turn off the oven or something, I want a team on the street working on those phone lines. We could be looking at an unofficial second headquarters; I want to know every communication that goes from there to Terminal City. Or there to anywhere else, for that matter. I want to know who lives there, who hides there... who walks by and spits on the sidewalk. Give me surveillance ASAP."
"Yes sir. Do you want bugs too? We can have the house wired in under an hour."
White considered the idea carefully. He had no immediate plans to send any of the Familiars into the house, but there was no telling what 452 and her little mutant pals had discovered about his father there already. He had no desire for the Conclave to learn anything more about his father's betrayal than they already did, and he was equally unwilling to expose his private life to his co-workers.
"No bugs," he finally decided. "Not yet, anyway. But I want those phones taken care of pronto, Otto. Oh, and if you spot a cable hook-up, drill into that too. Might as well see if we can crawl into his hard drive and check any e-mails."
"Right away," Otto promised, turning to leave. He paused in the doorway, wondering if he could get away with a little nudge in the direction of White's master plan. "Sir, does the tapping mean we're approaching Stage 3?"
"Now what did I say earlier, Otto? We have to be patient; give 494 time to bond with the little rugrat. If he doesn't give a damn, we have zero leverage."
"Leverage?" Otto repeated doubtfully.
White smiled broadly at his assistant; God, how he loved this job some days. "As a wise man once said, with the right lever, we can move the world. Or in this case, we can make 494 move it for us."
* * * * *
49614 was the only one in Logan's car to enjoy the trip back to Terminal City. Joshua was wrestling with both Max's predictions for the child's future and Logan's instructions, leaving him unusually subdued during a car ride he normally would have enjoyed. Logan was trying to follow his own advice to push Alec no further than Max had already tried, and Alec only spoke when spoken to. It was 49614 who upheld the burden of conversation, at least until they approached the gate at Terminal City.
Logan craned his neck and looked up at the water tower as they drove up, but he couldn't see anyone on guard this time.
"I don't know if it's a good sign or not," he murmured, "but I don't see Mole anywhere."
Alec took a quick glance out of Logan's window. "Back of the tower landing, two o'clock. Right... nope, there he goes."
"Are you... huh." Logan squinted, and then was forced to ask, "Does he still have the gun?"
"Mole always have gun," Joshua rumbled from the back seat.
"Yeah, right. Dumb question." Logan sighed as he guided the car through the opening in the mesh fence formed by the raised gate. Some days he really disliked being the only one in the crowd without superpowers. He had an irrational urge to go to Crash after he dropped Alec off and have a drink with Sketchy, just to make himself feel better about being in his own skin.
49614 fell silent as they drove down the short street that led to headquarters. Alec didn't notice at first, but when she continued to be quiet and wide-eyed as they got out of the car and walked into the old factory, he realized she was probably scared. Without saying anything to the others, he stopped and squatted down next to her.
"Hey, you doin' okay, monkey?" He reached out and lightly tickled her stomach, but only a ghost of a smile touched her small face.
"You don't have to look so worried, you know; everything's good now," he assured her. "You're safe, and you're going to stay that way. Everything will be fine."
She looked doubtful.
"Trust me," he said, in the voice that had won over women much older and more experienced than she.
She still looked dubious.
"Okay, okay," he conceded with a sigh. "I suppose that's a good thing. Wouldn't want you falling for lines like that from a guy like me when you get to be old enough to hear lines like that from guys like me."
That apparently counted as sufficient apology for her present circumstances; 49614 relented enough to stretch up her arms and demand, "Pick up."
Alec grinned and did as he was told. "Not sure why I bothered to memorize that barcode," he drawled as he stood up. "You've got me written all over you."
"Go ahead," Mole growled as he came up beside them. "Make the kid cry."
Max, Logan and Joshua turned back when they heard Mole's comment; he had hinted at a surprise when Max talked to him from the house, but on this day all surprises were becoming suspect.
"Like the sight of your ugly mug wouldn't do the trick first," Alec teased.
He snuck a quick glance down at the child, hoping she wouldn't react too strongly to Mole's unusual appearance. But apparently Joshua had sufficiently acclimated her to the more exotic end of the transgenic spectrum. Her green eyes were very big in her little face, and the hands clinging to Alec's jacket were holding on very tight indeed, but she didn't cry or whimper, even when Luke appeared by Mole's side and waved at her.
"Kids love me," Mole scoffed. Using the hand not carrying his beloved gun, he pushed the cigar over to the other side of his mouth and bit down savagely. "I have this warm, fuzzy quality going for me."
"Got some caterpillar DNA in there too, buddy?" Alec stretched out one hand and slapped it against Mole's midsection. "Or was that lunch?"
"Mole vegetarian," Joshua pointed out helpfully.
"Only damn things I'm sure aren't relatives," Mole growled, only half-kidding.
Joshua took a few steps closer to his friend, dropping one arm around Mole's shoulder in an apparently casual manner. His tone of voice was equally innocuous, yet the underlying command came through loud and clear.
"Mole should not use bad language in front of the little monkey."
"Yeah," Alec chimed in with a grin, "what's the matter with you, Mole? Were you born in a barn or something?"
"I'm just trying to broaden her vocabulary," Mole protested. "Kid needs to hear a little good old-fashioned swearing sometimes. You want her to grow up normal, don't ya?"
There was an awkward silence Mole didn't understand, a silence that made the tightly-wound Luke even more nervous than usual.
"I... I don't know about that plant thing, Mole," Luke stammered. "I saw this one trannie... swear to God he turned green in the sun. 'Course he also ate 16 live goldfish on a bet like ten minutes before, so it might not have been the sun that made him turn that color." He frowned and scratched his head, slowly working through the conundrum. "Come to think of it, if he had that much plant in him he probably wouldn't have tried eating the goldfish even if it was 50 bucks in his pocket free and clear."
Brin heard Alec's laughter as she approached from the catwalk above, and it caused her already slow pace to falter. Ever since she'd heard that 49614 had been found, she'd been mentally practicing what first to say to Alec. She didn't want to lie, but she also didn't want to spill out what might be unpleasant surprises in public. Unfortunately, she hadn't yet come across the perfect blend of tact and honesty when 49614 caught sight of her.
"Brin!" the child called out, looking fearfully past the X5 for the cold blonde woman who had always appeared by Brin's side.
Alec looked up at Brin when he heard his daughter call her name, and at first there was a smile on his face. Then with a sinking heart Brin could see the question leap into his head, quickly followed by the answer she dreaded.
"You know her, monkey?" he asked the little girl gently.
49614 nodded reluctantly and leaned over to whisper loudly in his ear, "Brin come and mean lady."
When Alec was smiling, really smiling, Brin had noticed that his hazel eyes turned very green. Today she saw the process in reverse when Alec turned back to her; she almost couldn't bear the flat, cold darkness from the one who had been her only friend in this new world.
"Mean lady, huh?"
Brin said nothing.
"Sure sounds like the way I remember our buddy Renfro. How 'bout you, Max?"
He caught Max completely at a loss for words. As hard as it had been to understand the secret Alec had kept from her, a grudging part of her had to admit he'd had his reasons. But to learn that Brin had known the truth and not even told Alec was beyond Max's comprehension. Before she could gather her scattered thoughts, Brin had already jumped in to offer her own explanation.
"Alec, I..." Brin began, but he cut her off.
"You knew," he said flatly.
That made Brin hurry down the steps towards him, made her speak before she even knew what to say. She just couldn't let him believe her capable of the cruelty he was imagining. Not even she could be so vicious or unfeeling; not anymore.
"I saw her... I knew who she was." As she approached him Brin pretended not to notice that Alec instinctively shifted his body to shield the child in his arms. "But after the lab burned, Renfro had her moved. I didn't know where she was, Alec; I swear. Renfro never told me."
"But you saw her," he insisted. "You went to visit her." Brin had visited her the way he had not been allowed; the way Renfro would never have imagined allowing him.
"Renfro brought me along." Brin was frantic to make him understand, but she could tell by the bleak look on his face that nothing she was saying could make it past the wall Alec had thrown up between them. She just couldn't make herself stop trying. "You know she kept me around like some sort of dog on a leash. She went to the nursery to check on all the children, and she would bring me with her."
The regret was written all over her face; it rang from every syllable she uttered. Alec had no doubt that Brin was sorry for what she had done, and sorrier still that he had found out the way he did. But right now, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't make that make a difference to him.
The truth was, he didn't believe in excuses. Oh, he might make some joking ones to Max about his sex life, or his work ethic, but the moment the man who used to be 494 realized he was actually hiding behind a bush with a detonator in his hand, ready to murder the girl he loved just because someone else told him to, he gave up on excuses. The things he had done for Manticore were beyond excuses, beyond explanations, and well beyond any 'I'm sorry' he might compose. They were what they were and he had to live with them.
That didn't mean he could be so stoic about Brin's mistakes, however, especially not when they concerned his kid.
"The part I don't get is where you never thought I might want to know you'd seen her." Alec shook his head stiffly, not daring to look at the wide-eyed subject of the discussion sitting quietly in his arms. "With all the time we spent together the last couple weeks, all the stuff we talked about, you never even thought to drop a hint?"
Brin hung her head. "I didn't know what happened to her, and I didn't know if you did either. Alec, I didn't even know if you cared. And I never heard anyone else talk about her, so I thought..." she raised her head to look Alec in the eye, "I thought she must be dead."
She'd seen him smile many times in the past three weeks, and sometimes he even seemed like he meant it. She'd also seen him serious, and more than once she'd seen him concerned. But with all the talks they'd had about Manticore and the past, she'd never once seen him look bitter.
Until now.
"Now there's a coincidence," he murmured as he walked past her. "Seeing as how they'd tried to barbecue the rest of us at the Seattle facility, I wasn't too sure myself what happened to her."
"I'm sorry, okay!" she said loudly to his retreating back. "If I'd known anything that would help..."
Something in Brin's tone broke the strange paralysis that had overtaken Max. She knew remorse when she heard it, because she'd heard it in her own voice way too often since she set all the transgenics free. Even when she did something she was sure was right, there was still no guarantee anyone else would agree.
"Alec, stop." Max hurried after him, grabbing his arm and pushing herself into his path when she caught up. "Brin wasn't trying to hurt you or your little girl. And you know the one good thing I could always say about you is that you don't hold a grudge. Of course," she lightened her tone, reaching for their usual bantering relationship, "that's probably because you're usually the one in the wrong. But now that you're not," abruptly she became serious again, "don't screw it up."
"Max," he said softly, "just let me go. I need out of here, now."
In a room filled with transgenics, speaking softly was no guarantee of privacy. Mole and Luke both overheard Alec's plea, and guessed where he was headed. After a silent momentary conference, they stepped up to circumvent his plans. Mole clapped him on his shoulder and tried to smile genially as Luke raised his hands to his face to pull it into an even odder shape than usual in an effort to make 49614 giggle.
"Alec, old buddy, old pal, where you off to so fast?" Mole's strained smile abruptly shifted into a scowl when he beheld Luke, who was now sticking his tongue out and wiggling it. "Stop that," he barked. "She'll think that's what she's going to turn into someday."
"Fellas," Alec said wearily, "I appreciate the welcoming committee, but I hear there's these things kids take called naps and..."
Luke's hands fell abruptly to his side. "And that's gonna be tough to do," he said anxiously, "unless you come with us."
* * * * *
It had come to this. He was reduced to trusting Otto.
Not completely, of course; Ames White would never be that stupid. Otto was stupid enough for the both of them, which would hopefully work to everyone's advantage. But in order for that to come to pass, he first needed to weave a tale that combined enough of the truth to keep future machinations from tipping his hand, and yet enough lies to keep Otto pliable.
White sighed inwardly. There were times he really disliked having to play Agency games as well as serve the needs of his people. Add in serving his own needs, and things could become very complicated very quickly.
"Otto, my good man, I'm sorry to keep you from your dinner, but we need to talk." White waved at one of the chairs in front of his desk as he came around to sit in the other one. "Sit, please."
Otto gingerly sat down, trying hard not to look like he was surreptitiously checking the seat cushion for explosives. He had almost made it out the door when White called him into the office; all the rest of the team was already deployed for the night shift or off duty. He was the last one in the office.
He and White, that is.
"Otto," White began, "I know you have questions about Stage 3. Hell, you've told me you had questions. And earlier I avoided answering them because I... well, there are things about me you don't know."
His assistant didn't say anything. There really was nothing to say. He agreed with White's statement, and he was hoping to preserve the truth of it. The stranger White's behavior became, the less Otto wanted any part of it.
"I was married; you do know that."
"Yes sir."
"My wife, she... well, she died a few months ago."
"Sir?" Otto was stunned. How could White have gone through something so momentous in his personal life and not had one word of it leak out? Security, even in the government... make that especially in the government... just wasn't that tight.
White had read the look in Otto's eyes and realized he needed to play up the details even more than he'd expected. "We had some problems at the end; I didn't like to talk about it."
"I see."
"One morning we had a fight, and I went to work. When I came home she was gone... and my son with her."
"I'm so sorry, sir."
White stood up and began to pace, feeling the honest rage build in him as he spun his tale. Wendy had betrayed him, and she had done so after he risked censure from the Conclave by letting her live. But to use his son as the instrument of her betrayal was the cruelest cut of all.
"She left me a note... I won't go into details. But she mentioned that her enemy's enemy was her friend. By then I was the enemy, so the transgenics were her friends. Or so she thought."
He paused for a moment, letting the suspicion take root.
"I don't know how she died; I don't know if they killed her outright or if she just died because she was with them. What I do know is that I haven't seen my son since that day. They... 452... won't even tell me if he's alive." He slammed his fist against the wall so hard his diplomas came crashing down around his feet. "But I know he is. He has to be."
"Sir, I'm very sorry for your loss. But I," Otto winced, "I still don't see what this has to do with your plan for the little girl."
"She's bait, Otto," White explained with thinly disguised impatience. "494 has been looking for her since Manticore went down; he wants to find his little girl. We've facilitated that... behind the scenes, of course... and soon, when he's full of what passes for fatherly devotion among mutants, we'll take her back. What wouldn't he do to rescue his pride and joy from our evil clutches?"
"He can turn over your son," Otto murmured as the light began to dawn.
"Exactly." White rolled his eyes, though he was careful to turn his back on his assistant first. Granted, Otto was an ordinary, but even for that he was a bit thick. "I offer an even exchange – I get my son and he gets his daughter."
"Except... sir, they want to study her. The higher ups, I mean. They're not going to appreciate it if we just let her walk off with her daddy and live happily ever after."
"And they will study her." White turned around and clapped Otto heartily on the shoulder. "You don't think I'm really going to follow through on my end of the exchange, do you? This way we net both the child and one of the DNA contributors – it will be invaluable information on what traits the X series might be passing on as a result of that breeding program." He shuddered in very real distaste. "Not to mention what must be going on in Terminal City these days. It won't be long before we're overrun with a new generation of transgenics, and we need to know right now what to expect."
He could see the wheels turning in Otto's head; any minute now he was going to smell the wood burning. White's plan as presented gave him the chance to do his patriotic duty, and help someone he knew at the same time. Whatever compunctions he might develop about taking the child from 494 wouldn't stand against the idea of reuniting his boss with the son so cruelly taken from him.
"Sir," Otto said at last, "what do you need from me?"
"The same thing you've always given me, Otto. Unquestioning loyalty. What man could ask for more than that from his friends?"
* * * * *
"This is... unbelievable." Alec stood in the middle of the living room, formerly known as the executive secretary's office, and looked around in complete amazement. "I mean it's incredible. You got chairs and a couch and a... a piano. And a bookcase." He turned to Mole and frowned. "Why did you get a bookcase?"
"Gonna teach the kid to read, aren't you?" the transgenic growled in response. "Or do you want her to turn out like you?"
Alec shuddered in very real distaste. "Not even gonna go there, pal."
"We couldn't do anything about a kitchen," Luke apologized, "not in here anyway. But we can fix up the old break room down the hall."
"Latrine's down the hall too," Mole pointed out gruffly. "No way to fix that – Manticore didn't teach anyone plumbing beyond a shovel and a pail."
"Diapers," Logan exclaimed. "You're going to need diapers. I mean she will." He slapped his hand to his forehead. "We should have stopped on the way."
"Diapers?" Mole asked. "What do you need those for?"
It was Logan's turn to be puzzled. "What do you mean 'what do you need those for'? And... stop looking at me like I have two heads."
Luke laughed nervously, his eyes darting from Logan to Mole. "Around here," he joked, "two heads just means you're one of the gang."
Alec rested his hand lightly on Logan's shoulder as he addressed his friends. "What our well-meaning, but genetically challenged friend here..."
"Genetically challenged?" Logan repeated, in mingled tones of disbelief and budding annoyance.
"Work with me man." Alec raised his voice and tried again, this time slightly more diplomatically. "What Logan is trying to say is that he thinks someone this small," he gently raised the arm on which 49614 sat, "still needs diapers."
Mole snorted and chomped down on his cigar. "As old as she is? What does he think she is? Human?"
Logan pushed his glasses up to the bridge of his nose and stared down the lizard-skinned transgenic. "It was a perfectly reasonable assumption."
"Except we weren't made by reasonable people," Alec pointed out. "An army doesn't march proudly carrying its potty chairs. As far as Mother Manticore was concerned, as soon as you were big enough to walk to the latrine, that's what you used. And she must have been walking for months by now."
Logan's jaw dropped slightly. "But she's..."
"Transgenic. The word you're searching for is transgenic."
"But the people at the orphanage wouldn't have taught her so young. It wouldn't even have occurred to them."
Alec made a face at Logan's earnest but misguided protest. "No need to teach her; it's just kind of bred into us. You think they wanted to waste highly trained technicians on housebreaking..."
"Toilet training," the human corrected him with an exasperated sigh.
"Whatever." Alec blithely accepted the rebuke and moved on. "The point is: they trained us how to fight. Strictly offense. Anything survival related, we learned on our own, or we just didn't survive."
"The point is," Mole growled, "the latrine's down the hall."
"But we moved one of the tables from the break room in here, so at least you can eat in here if you want." With all the diaper controversy, Luke suddenly felt some of the shine had been stolen from their creation. "And you gotta take a look at the bedrooms. There's beds and nightstands and even lamps so you can read the little one bedtime stories."
"And again with the books," Alec muttered under his breath. Raising his voice, he added, "Seriously though, guys, this is... I don't know how to thank you. But how did you get it done so fast?"
"You have a lot of friends," Brin said softly from the doorway. She hadn't dared to come in further, although given the large number of transgenics now crowding into the room to see how their work was received, she probably could have escaped notice if she hadn't spoken.
"You have friends who can tear down, relocate and reassemble an entire base camp in under two hours," Mole corrected her. "The amount of stuff you had to move? Chump change."
"But why did you do all this?" Alec put 49614 down and gestured to the newly remodeled suite. "I had a room; it's not like..."
"You can't expect a kid to live in BOQ," Mole barked. "She just got out of the sweatbox."
"You didn't even have room for another bed in there," Dix pointed out. "We considered that option first, if it makes you feel any better."
Making Alec feel better was a difficult proposition at this point. He was genuinely overwhelmed by what his friends had done for him; nothing in his years at Manticore had prepared him for the way the Terminal City transgenics banded together and helped each other out. But at the same time he felt like he was pulling off the biggest con of his life in accepting their generosity. And unlike most of his previous cons, this time he felt very guilty about his success.
"I, uh, really appreciate everything you've done for her," he said slowly. "This place... it's great. You can't even tell it wasn't always a, well, a home."
In truth, there were some obvious touches that still spoke of the rooms' former days as office space. The chairs were of the hard-backed, under-stuffed variety, undeniably relicts of a decorator's efforts to make office chairs look like armchairs. The 'breakfast nook' featured plastic, cafeteria-style furnishings, and a quick peek in the bedrooms revealed that the closets and dressers were actually fireproof cabinets. It was a home in a fashion that might seem laughable to someone lucky enough to grow up with things like nightlights and garbage disposals, but to these refugees from barracks and dungeons and all the crawl spaces in between, it was a setting fit for the front cover of a decorating magazine.
A small voice pulled Alec away from his inspection of his new home. Under Luke's careful guidance 49614 had discovered the smaller bedroom; she was now standing in the doorway to it demanding, "Mine?"
He couldn't help but grin with fatherly pride; there were moments when the resemblance between them was truly scary.
"That's right, monkey," he said, joining her in the doorway to her new digs. "They made this just for... whoa."
Alec hadn't looked in either bedroom yet; the living room had been surprise enough. But the sight of his daughter's room, furnished with such great attention to detail made all the more remarkable for the time constraints involved, was a new reason to wallow in the fierce wish that this was all for keeps.
His friends had found a pink bedcover from somewhere, or perhaps hastily washed a white one with something red to make it the color deemed appropriate for little girls. Although no curtains hung from the structure, someone had taken the time to nail an additional post to each corner of the pine-frame bed, and then a frame around the top, in an attempt to recreate a four-poster bed. A fruit crate, draped with a white scarf, served as the nightstand, and upon it rested a small, cylindrical lamp made of rice paper, with tiny cutout figures of carousel horses prancing in a circle inside. And propped up against the small pillow, as a final touch, sat a stuffed panda bear.
"Mine," 49614 repeated in a tone of distinct satisfaction.
* * * * *
It took some time to clear the crowd from Alec's 'apartment;' his friends were justifiably proud of their efforts, and anxious to see that the newest resident of Terminal City was comfortable in her new home. But eventually Max, with Brin's unsolicited assistance, was able to steer the party back down to headquarters, leaving Alec and 49614 to explore their new home with only the aid of Logan and Joshua.
"Still can't believe they did all this," Alec murmured as he ran a light hand over the empty bookcase. "I mean I know Max had some stuff set up for Gem because of Regan, but that was during the siege, so there wasn't a whole lot of time for anything fancy. But this..." he stopped examining the bookcase and looked all around the room, "There still wasn't time and they did it anyway."
"Terminal City home now," Joshua offered by way of explanation. He looked up from the floor where he sat with 49614, companionably scribbling in the new 'coloring book' someone had quickly assembled out of scrap paper. "Must... make seem like home."
"He's right. Terminal City is a community now, not just a collection of abandoned buildings and lost souls." Logan reached out and gently tapped at a piano key, then another. When the resulting sound proved somewhat pleasant, he swung around on the piano bench and tried a few more keys. "They want you to know that you, and your daughter, are an important part of that community."
"Look, I don't do humble real well, so you might want to watch the soft soap about being an important part of the... ouch!"
Alec's warning to Logan was cut short by a splinter, courtesy of the very new wood in the bookcase. 49614, however, assumed he was making a comment on Logan's musical skills, and immediately came to her father's aid. Scrambling to her feet, she scurried over to the old piano and laid her tiny hands beneath Logan's much larger ones, covering as many keys as she could touch.
"Daddy play now," she informed her newfound 'uncle' sternly.
Logan raised his hands slowly into the air, grinning all the while at her protective streak. "Alec, I think you have a fan. Better play something fast before she gets rough."
"Are you afraid of a girl, Logan?" Alec teased before he stuck his injured finger in his mouth and sucked out the splinter. "Wait a minute, wait a minute; you're dating Max, so I guess the answer to that would be yes."
"Daddy play now," 49614 reiterated, switching her tone from commanding to plaintive as she turned the full force of her green eyes on her hapless parent.
"Coming right up," he said quickly. "Move over, Logan; I've got a request."
Logan obliged him by abandoning the piano bench altogether, leaving ample room for 49614 to sit next to Alec and lean in, watching with rapt attention every move his fingers made. After a few minutes of close, silent observation, 49614 glanced back at Logan and announced, "Daddy play good."
Her meaning was clear, but Logan accepted his less-than-favorable review with good humor. He was curious about one thing he had noticed, though, and now seemed as good a time as any to ask Alec about it.
"Alec, is it me or is she acting a little more... adult… than she did earlier? I mean she was walking and talking before, but she just seems more... aware. And her motor skills are better," Logan added when he saw the child trying to pick out the same pattern of keys her father played, a few octaves below him.
"It's not you," Alec answered, pausing to reposition 49614's right hand on the keys before he continued. "According to Renfro, it's something she probably inherited from her mother. 416 could look like anyone, but she can act like anyone. She mimics the behavior of the people around her, kind of as protective coloration. Put her with a bunch of kids and she'll act her age, or maybe a little younger. Put her with adults and all the skill levels increase: motor, language, cognitive, you name it."
"According to Renfro," Logan said slowly.
He had left the question implicit in his statement, something Alec heard loud and clear. The transgenic glanced over his shoulder and smiled slyly as he admitted, "I might have taken more than just a peek at Renfro's files."
Logan almost hated to ask the next question; everything was, for the moment, serene and he was loath to disturb the fragile peace. But he didn't feel like he had a choice, not when he saw the little girl so determinedly trying to mimic her father's behavior to fit herself into his life.
"So does that mean I look for a family with kids, or without?"
He could see the remark hit home, but it gave him no pleasure to watch Alec's smile vanish as though it had never been, or to see the sudden tremor in the X5's hands as they momentarily faltered on the keyboard.
"You know, monkey," Alec said after he cleared his throat, "I think maybe we should let Uncle Logan go back to his nice toxin-free house; what do you think about that?"
"The toxins; my God, I didn't even think about them." Logan stared down at 49614 in dawning horror. "Are you sure she's going to be safe here? It's not like you can pass on vaccinations; she's completely vulnerable."
"Do you think I would have brought her here if she wasn't immune?" Alec demanded. "Sandeman didn't line us all up for bio-warfare shots, you know; he hard-coded the immunities into our DNA. She's got it coming from both sides; she'll be fine." He eyed the human sourly. "Now if you and Max ever get your act together and start thinking about collecting your own set of rugrats, that's another story. But she's fine."
"That's good, that's really... good." Logan paused for a moment and then turned to go; Alec had made it fairly clear he'd outstayed his welcome. The transgenic let him get almost to the door before he called out to him.
"I am serious about it, Logan."
Logan stopped, his hand hovering just over the doorknob. "I believe you're serious, Alec." He looked over his shoulder at the transgenics, father and daughter, as they regarded him from the piano bench. "I just don't think you're as sure as you say you are. Or as sure as you need to be."
"Who are you to judge?"
"The guy you're asking to help you do something you can't take back." Logan turned the knob this time and opened the door. "I'll be in touch."
* * * * *
One slow step at a time, Brin forced herself to join Max in the sunken pit Mole called the transgenics' "war room." It had taken her a good five minutes to get from the catwalk above to this point, but she knew this conversation must be had, no matter how reluctant she was to begin it.
"I appreciate you trying to talk to Alec for me, Max."
Max looked up from the map of the sewer she was pretending to study and regarded her older sister blankly. "I didn't do it for you; I did it for him."
"I know," Brin acknowledged.
She pushed her hair off of her face, still trying to adjust to its new, shorter length. For the same reason she'd grown her hair long after their first escape from Manticore, the discovery that Renfro had tried to roast her in her bed had prompted her to cut most of it off. One less tie to the Brin who had been.
"But I also know you could have just said, 'Go Alec, I'm with you' and left it at that. You didn't."
"That wasn't what he needed to hear." Max's voice hardened. In her mind's eye she could still see the look on Alec's face when he said 'You knew,' and Brin's guilty conscience couldn't quite stack up against that memory. "It doesn't mean I think you were right, though. You should have told him."
"I..." Brin sighed deeply, "I wish I had. I just didn't know how much it mattered to him."
"Didn't know?" Max repeated, her eyes narrowing with suspicion. "After the way we grew up..."
"Exactly," Brin broke in. "We were bred to be soldiers, Max. That's the only thing we were ever trained to do, the only thing we were ever supposed to be."
"Times change," Max said shortly. "Whatever we were bred for doesn't exist anymore. We're just plain old human beings now, give or take some extra polish on the genetic markers."
"It's all so different here." Brin looked around the old factory, at the weapons on the table, interspersed with ham sandwiches and bike chains, at the transgenics repairing machinery and the ones watching a Seahawks game on a plasma screen TV that mysteriously 'appeared' one day. "It's like we all have this dirty little secret in common, and everyone wants to pretend it's just a... misunderstanding or something. I mean Manticore is what brought us all here, Manticore is the one thing we all have in common. But Manticore is the one thing we all want to forget." She hung her head, the chin-length locks of her straight dark hair falling like curtains on either side of her face. "I didn't mention 49614 to Alec because he tries harder than anyone to pretend the memories don't hurt."
"Max."
Max whirled around in surprise; given her superior hearing Logan could almost never sneak up on her. It was a measure of how deeply the conversation with Brin was disturbing her that she hadn't heard Logan approach until he was standing directly behind her. Even then he had to say her name to get her attention.
"Logan. I, uh, didn't know you were there."
"I'm gonna go," Brin said quickly. "I think... I think I have some thinking to do. And then," she added with a sigh, "I'm sure I have some more groveling to do."
"Just give him a little time," Logan advised. "Everything hitting at once... I don't think any of you know how to deal with it. From everything I've been told about Manticore, I'm guessing that teaching kids to cope with emotional upheaval wasn't big on their curriculum."
"Sure it was," Brin answered. "Right after singing lessons."
Max couldn't help the smile that gained purchase on the corners of her lips. For just a minute Brin sounded like her old self, like the big sister she remembered from days long gone by.
"Nah," she scoffed in turn. "It was before singing but after Poise and Deportment." She threw a light punch at Brin's upper arm. "You just used to skip class a lot."
"And now I'll be skipping on out of here," Brin promised.
"Now that I got to see, sista."
Logan watched their bantering with a smile, and he was still grinning when he found himself alone with Max.
"It's nice to see you two kid around like that. I know you wanted things to be like they used to be."
Max's lightened mood abruptly shifted. "And that's a wish I'm obviously not gonna get. But yeah," she made the effort to smile again, for Logan's sake, "I'm glad we can still kid around a little too. Now if she can just fix things with Alec..."
"That may take some time," Logan interjected. "But while they're trying, how about a little time staying out of it? As in, we do our thing, they do theirs and maybe we compare notes some day. Or," he added, thinking back on all the unwanted details he had learned about Alec's life in the past few hours, "maybe not."
"I don't know about that," Max answered slowly. Each word sounded as if it were being dragged from her, but she didn't hold back a one. "Things are all haywire around here right now; I really don't think I should go anywhere."
"Not even for dinner? I've got all the ingredients for my famous chicken Florentine stashed away in the kitchen at Joshua's house... assuming they didn't eat that after the little hot dogs. And even if they did," he turned up his hands, "so what? A bottle of wine and thee; what more could a guy ask for?"
"Logan, that's so sweet," she rested one hand on the sleeve of his coat, "but no. Not tonight. They need me, even if it's only to know that I'm here."
He wanted to protest, or to cajole her some more. He wanted to woo her with words in lieu of the simple gestures like taking her hand or stroking her hair that he had once taken for granted. But he'd known Max long enough to know when she couldn't be swayed. Her family was what mattered most to her tonight and he...
... didn't seem to be a part of it, at least not like he once was.
"I guess I'll just be going then," he said quietly. "I'll stop by again tomorrow to check on things, see if Alec's changed his mind..."
"Come to his senses," she corrected him grimly.
"If you need me... if you need anything, just call, okay?"
"I will. And if I didn't say it before, thanks."
"Sure. No problem." He started backing up, his blue eyes fixed on her face as though he wanted to store up memories before a long separation. "What are friends for?"
Suddenly she realized there was something wrong in his tone; there was a ring of something he was agreeing to that she didn't even know she'd proposed.
"Logan, wait!" she called out.
But he didn't stop. He didn't even turn around. And in that moment, that one tiny, finite moment, she chose not to pursue him.
* * * * *
To Be Continued