Author's Note: I gotta thank ML Fan for a nice review! Anyway, on with the story.

The italicized beginning is in Max's point of view, and it will be like that in future chapters. Kind of a boring start, but it's there for future chapters.

This is set for after the 2nd season I believe, it's been so long since I've seen the shows. I miss them. ::sad face::


Chapter One: Recon Mission

The enemy- god, I hate sounding military- has a new plan of attack for us. We found out from our efforts to blow up one of their bases. The problem is that we don't know what it is. White has caused a good many problems in our finding out as well, him and his apocolyptic-bent bunch of nutjobs. Makes me wish for the old times with Manticore again. Then I remember what they did to all of us. Especially Ben and Zack. Their lives were destroyed.

So the plan is to crash another base, and steal some paperwork. Simple as that, just a recon mission. Except that our troops are being stretched out as it is. Logan and I have been working on the plans for finding more of "us" out there, but we are only focusing on it half-heartedly. The chances of finding any others that want to be put right back into a military type establishment would be very few indeed.

Yeah, I thought it. What is the difference of what we're doing and what Manticore did? The similarities are very scary, but very real. We're risking their lives, some dying almost every day. We have to continue like they were just collateral damage. What would I do if I lost Joshua, or Logan?

It's like that saying "The ends justify the means." But there may not be any one left for the end, and that realization is what makes me want to just end it. That's why I'm going on the recon-mission. Logan protested at first, but he knew that was the best way for the job to get done.

I told him that I'd get out just fine, like I always do. He looked at me with those eyes, ones I had seen even before I met him, and in them I saw the worry of one I loved so much. It was up to me to get those files, and hopefully save many lives in the process. I had to save the ones I had set free from Manticore, and really show them what the world can be like.

The "abandoned" industrial building had a lot of surveillance, just as Max figured. It was a building that her efforts had put into a siege once, but had failed miserably. The cult bastards kept using it, as if to make their enemies remember the tremendous failure they had endured. Max thought of it as a mistake made by a very cocky cult. A mistake that made a perfect advantage for her side. Her face was covered by a ski-mask, and her usual black outfit adorned her as she hopped the barbed-wire chainlink fence. In less than one minute, she was through the back door; her back against the wall gliding past the security cameras many would have thought were broken or old.

She knew better.

Her eyes scanned every door and hallway she passed through, checking for any guards around that would alert the enemy to her prescence. She had made it up to the fourth floor in 15 minutes, and was through into the room in the next three. She pulled off her ski-mask, brown hair falling down around her face.

Max's mission was simple, find the files pertaining to the genetic-enhanced efforts. Her eyes scanned through the file cabinets, but she wasn't finding anything of use. Then her eyes came across a file named "X5". She hadn't seen that name in a long time, nobody else cared about the different groups the genetics came from. She pulled out the file and skimmed through it, finding information about her and all of the others in there. All the ones that were dead, one's that were fighting with her, and others she had never seen again since their escape of Manticore more than a decade ago. She quickly put the file in her bag, then continued to search the other cabinets. She found three files filled with genetic information, and put them all into her bag. As she headed out the door, she noticed something in a bookcase she hadn't seen when she had entered the room. Sitting on the bookshelf level with her face, was a fake book with a camera inside. "Oh, shit!" Max said pissed off, as she sprinted out of the room and down the stairs. She hoped the security camera was fake, but she knew better. Three men were outside waiting for her.

She attacked the one to the left first, stealing his weapon and shooting him right between the eyes. The other two opened fire, but she was on the ground and shot out all their knees. The men weren't accustomed to the pain, and they cried out as they fell to the ground, legs shattered. Max shot the other two in the head in between the eyes, and jumped over the fence, heading to the rendezvous site where she would pass the information to another soldier who would take it to base.

Mission Accomplished.