Chapter 6
Max had managed to avoid Alec and his two stooges since the incident that morning. She knew she hadn't handled it very well, but Alec was just so infuriating! Would it have killed him to be a gentleman about the whole thing and let her untangle her body from his without embarrassment? No. But did he? No… Asshole. Jerk. Bastard…Really, she could go on all day coming up with names to call him, and in fact, that is what she had spent most of the day doing, but the day was almost over, and sooner or later she was going to see him. Terminal City was only so big…Speak of the Devil…
Alec was sitting on the floor surrounded by small children. They were all sitting Indian style with perfect posture and they were hanging on his every word. Her heart went out to those kids. They were so young and already they had been trained to sit at attention at all times. She could only hope that Manticore had burned down before any of them had experienced torture or punishment. She could give up her life here and everything she had ever loved, without regret, if she could guarantee that these kids were spared what she and the others were not.
As she got closer, she could here what Alec was saying. "And then the Evil Queen ordered her guards to bring the handsome Knight to her throne room." His voice changed to an evil cackle that sounded a little too much like Renfro, "So, Sir Knight, you think you can defy my orders and rescue the beautiful young princess? Well think again!" His voice went back to normal. "And the Knight was dragged away from the evil Queen and thrown into the dungeon. But lucky for him, one of the guards was his friend…"He looked up and saw Max. "Oh, hey Maxie." He turned back to the kids. "We'll finish this later guys. Why don't you go and see if Joshua needs help painting something." He stood, picking up a small girl that Max hadn't realized was sitting in his lap. He whispered something to the little girl and she smiled brightly at him before he placed her on her feet and she ran off with the others. Turning to Max, he gave her what he hoped was an endearing look. "I've been looking for you."
"For me?"
"Yeah. I moved your stuff into a better space. It's still small, but it is cleaner, it has a window and a private bathroom with a working bathtub."
"Really! A bathtub?" her eyes brightened at the thought.
"Yeah, but.."
Her smile disappeared, she knew there would be a catch. "But what?"
"But you're still stuck with me and Biggs and Axel. There just aren't enough habitable apartments for everyone, and with everything that's going on, it doesn't make sense to fix up anymore. I was just hoping that the bathtub would impress you enough that you wouldn't notice the three of us." He gave her the shy smile that had worked on so many impressionable young women in the past.
She thought about it for a minute."What about a mattress?"
"What?'
"Am I still sleeping on the floor, or did you find me a mattress?"
"If I find you a mattress, will you be ok with the arrangement?"
"Find me one and I'll think about it."
"Ah, Maxie, you are too kind to me."
"I am! Do you realize what the three of you are like when you are together? You act like five-year-old-children. Wait. Strike that." Max had a mental flashback to the well behaved transgenic children Alec had just been playing with, "Five-year-old-ordinary-children!"
He couldn't deny the truth of her words. When they got together it was like they were trying to recapture some of their lost youth. He could only grin in response.
"Go on, Alec. That mattress isn't finding itself." She gave him a little shove, and headed off in the other direction.
He allowed himself to be pushed, but he really didn't need to. He had already made sure there was a mattress for her after he had found someone to fix the bathtub.
There was a meeting scheduled for that night. At least one representative from every Unit had to report to every meeting. Everyone was welcome to come and listen or bring up an issue, but at least one person had to attend. Mole and Dix usually ran the meetings. The freaks had a greater interest in organizing T.C. since they couldn't go out into the world and fend for themselves. The X's had more flexibility since they could blend in with the ordinaries more easily, so they tended to do most of the leg work.
Max was one of the first people at the meeting. She knew that they were going to be discussing the possibility of leaving Terminal City, and she was nervous. A part of her hoped that someone would come up with a plan that would allow them to stay, but another, very small part of her was kind of excited about the possibility of starting over somewhere new.
The meeting started at 2300 hours on the dot as scheduled. Manticore would be so proud.
"OK. Let's get started. Who wants to go first?" Mole brought the meeting to order while he lit his cigar.
Max looked around the room at all of the people assembled. There was a pretty good turnout. In fact, the only people that seemed to be missing were those on duty at the perimeter, manning the security cameras, or those keeping an eye on the younger ones. Joshua and Gem were missing, so they must be among those that were with the little ones.
A pretty redhead stood up. "We have finished setting up the new arrival office. So, everyone else who makes it here needs to check in there. That way, we can keep track of the number of residents, and also what everyone's specialties are. We are also trying to see how many are still unaccounted for. I have a preliminary list of designations and specialties, so please check and make sure that you're on it and that your info is correct."
"Thanks Carly." Mole acknowledged her, "Who's next?"
An odd looking camel-colored scaly creature stood up and faced the crowd, "Uh. Hi. Um. Some of the kids have been playing in our sand and building castles in it and we feel bad about crushing their projects, but we need the sand to sleep in. It keeps to moisture off of our skin. Can anybody get a couple of hundred pounds of sand?"
"I think I can help you out, man. See me after the meeting." A voice spoke up from the back.
The meeting went pretty quickly for the next hour. It was almost as if everyone knew that there was something important to talk about, but nobody wanted to be the one to bring it up. Max was getting restless. She looked to Alec hoping he would be the one to bring it up, but she couldn't catch his eye. He had a laptop in front of him and whatever he was doing with it seemed to have his full attentionIf he's playing video games over there I am so going to kick his ass !
When the dark haired man that was speaking had his issue resolved and sat down, Max stood up.
"Yes, Princess?" Mole smiled at her with his cigar between his teeth. He had been wondering when one of them was going to stand up and address the real reason this meeting had been called. Another five minutes and he would have had to do it himself.
"Hi everyone. For those of you that don't know me, I'm Max."
"And for those of you that were named by her, she's sorry." Alec interrupted from the back. A chorus of giggles broke out and Axel gave him a high-five.
Max shot him a death glare, "If you don't mind, Dick, I was in the middle of something."
"I was just helping you out there Maxie."
"Not the kind of help I was looking for, thanks." She said sarcastically.
"I've got all kinds of help, what kind do you need?"
"Well, for starters, you can shut the hell up. Why is it so hard for you-"
"HEY!" Mole yelled from the head of the room. The whole room went silent. "Max, did you have something to share, or were you and Alec just trying to entertain us?" God those X's could be such a pain in the ass!
"Yeah. Sorry. I know that this is nothing you haven't already heard, but last night, a couple of us who had been living outside T.C. had some trouble. White managed to find out the locations of several of our apartments, which forced us to move into Terminal City. Well, 'move' isn't exactly the right word since none of us could retrieve any of our stuff, but the point is that White found us. He also got to one of Alec's contacts and Alec was ambushed and captured by four Familiars when he showed up for his meeting. Things are heating up. The Familiars know too much. They're closing in on us, and so are the rest of our enemies. Our location isn't a secret anymore. They all know where we are. It's too dangerous for us to stay here. We could probably hold off a ground attack, but if they dropped even a single bomb or we're done."
She looked around the room as she spoke, making direct eye-contact with as many people as she could. "We were trained better than this. We're trained better than our enemies. We can win, but we have to find a more secure location. We have to leave T.C."
The room erupted in noise as everyone started talking at once. Mole fired one quick shot in the air. The walls shook as everyone dropped to the floor at once.
"Mole!" someone yelled from the back.
"Relax, it was just a blank. All right! Let the girl talk! You know the rule. Whoever has the floor has the floor!" He gestured for Max to keep going.
"Does anybody have any ideas?"
Luke stood up from the back. "We've been looking into some leads, but our intel is all old. We would actually have to send out a couple of teams to scout the locations. And none of the possibilities would really be able to accommodate ALL of us even if they did pan out. Hell, T.C. can't accommodate us anymore. There's just too many of us. So the best plan is to split up into a couple of groups. We can work out the details of that after we have a better idea about what our options are."
"Good. Sounds like a good start. Any volunteers for scouting missions?" Max addressed the crowd again.
Several hands went up.
"Fine. Luke can you head this project?"
The odd-looking man beamed at the responsibility. "Sure, I can have teams out by tomorrow night."
"Good. Just make sure that you leave enough experienced fighters behind in case we're attacked while the scouts are out. We gotta be prepared."
"No problem."
"Ok. You heard him people. See Luke after the meeting to volunteer."
Mole took back control at that point and the meeting ended a few minutes later.
When the meeting was over Max approached the pretty redheaded girl that had spoken at the start of the meeting. "Carly right? From the new arrival office?" Max asked. The girl nodded and Max continued. "Do you have a minute?"
"Sure. What do you need?"
Max pulled out a piece of paper from her pocket. "This is a list of the barcodes from my unit. Do you think you could let me know if any of them show up here?"
Carly looked at the list and then back up into Max's hopeful eyes. "Sure, Max, but what makes you think they would come here? I mean, none of them were still at Manticore when it went down, why would they come out of hiding just to put themselves back in danger?"
"I know. You're right. It's a long shot. But could you just keep an eye out anyway?"
"Sure thing. I just don't want you to get your hopes up."
"The hope is what keeps me going." Max said quietly, her eyes downcast. "Thanks Carly." She mumbled as she turned away.
Carly watched her walk away with a twinge of sadness. She didn't know what it would be like to lose her entire unit. And she hoped everyday that she would never have to find out. She scrapped her plans to head over to the dining hall, and instead went directly to the new arrival office.
Biggs was waiting for Max in the hall.
"Nice job, Maxie."
She groaned. "Not you too. Don't call me Maxie. How hard is it to just stop at the x?"
"Aw, come on, you know you like it. It makes you special. You don't just have one name that is all yours, but you have a nickname too. Most of these kids don't even have real names yet. I ran into a girl this morning who tried to tell me her name was 'Fixit'. What the hell is that shit? I told her she needed to get a real name…"
"You saw Fixit? She's here?" Max interrupted.
"You know her?" Biggs asked.
"She named her." Alec interjected as he came up behind them smirking.
"You did that to her? Why? What did she do to you?" Biggs asked.
Max didn't bother answering, she just punched him in the stomach to shut him up. Biggs doubled over from the blow.
Alec clapped him on the back as he passed him. "Better you than me, Biggsy."
Alec had won a bottle of scotch playing cards with some X-6's and he, Biggs and Max were heading up to the roof to drink it. Axel had sentry duty and couldn't join them.
They took a shortcut through Command. Max walked in first with Alec with Biggs deep in conversation and still a few steps behind. Max wasn't paying attention to them. She had heard something about 'Battlebots' and tuned them out.
Rich, a blond-haired X-5 called out to Max when he saw her. "Hey Max! I got a hit from that list you gave Carly!"
Max stopped in her tracks and spun to face him. "What?" she asked as her heart caught in her chest.
"That list of your 'siblings', one of the new arrivals is a match." He said.
"What?" Max said again not allowing herself to believe that she had heard him correctly and that one of her siblings was actually there. Alec caught up to her at this point and barely managed not to crash into her.
"What the hell, Max?" Alec asked, confused as to why she had stopped.
" She was right behind me. She should be here any minute." Rich continued gesturing in the direction he had come from.
Max turned toward the door that led to the hallway where the new arrival office was located.
"She?" she whispered still in shock. One of my sisters is here! she thought, her excitement starting to grow.
Just then the door opened and in walked a beautiful girl with distinctly Asian features. She had long, straight, silky, dark hair and chocolate brown eyes similar to Max's.
"Brin" Max whispered.
Brin looked in her direction and a huge smiled spread across her features. "Oh My GOD! I can't believe you are here! I was so worried about you! I didn't think you had made it!" She rushed across the room. Max regained her composure and was just about to reach out to hug her long-lost-sister when Brin ran right past her and threw herself into Alec's arms hugging him tightly.