Ahh finally a review, only took a week. So a review means a new chapter and here it is.
Chapter 18
A Final Glance
"I found him" she heard Logan declare from the other room.
She stood up from the sofa smiling, "Seidner?" she asked walking towards him.
He stood and turned, "No Lydecker."
"You're kidding?" She'd always known Logan was good, but sometimes he amazed even her. This was the guy that taught her how to escape and evade and he was being brought down by a guy with no military training.
"Nope" he smiled.
She smiled back, Logan finally seeming happy for the first time in awhile. He was keeping a secret, she knew that, there was something weighing on his mind that he wasn't sharing with her. He of course claimed that there wasn't but after a year she knew better. "So what's the game plan gonna be? We go hey guess what you spent twenty plus years working for the people who off-ed your wife?"
His eyes grew serious and the high of finding Lydecker wore off, "We give him the report, let him figure out the truth himself."
Max made a face, there was always going to be a part of her that just wanted to pour salt in Lydecker's wounds. She thought about that picture again, she thought about Lydecker covered in paint, his arm wrapped around his wife. Logan was right, it hadn't been a lie. That was love, as pure and as true as theirs, whatever else she was, whatever else he became didn't change that. They were going to be telling a guy that he had been made into a monster by the people he had trusted.
"I've got to see Sebastian tomorrow, I should be home by 10. That sound good?"
Max nodded, she didn't want to wait, but showing up on Lydecker's doorstep at 3am would be more than a little odd and the last thing she wanted to find out what was Lydecker nighttime attire.
-
"Max?" Lydecker face and voice showed the shock of seeing her.
"Let your guard down with that shower. Don't you know people are looking to kill you?"
"I'm taking it you're not one of them?"
"If I wanted you dead, you would have been dead awhile ago."
"So why are you here Max?"
"Why are you here? Like they're not going to come looking for you at your apartment?"
He toweled his hair looking at her "They'll never trace this place back to me."
"I traced it back to you."
"Logan traced it back to me," he pointed out, though he didn't doubt her abilities to do so, just her need. "It was the eyes thing wasn't it?" Finally realizing why she was here.
Max nodded
"She'd been gone for three years when they started making you. I knew one of the guys in the lab, I don't know why I asked him. I guess I just couldn't bear the thought that her eyes wouldn't be out there somewhere. Just a little part of her left in the world."
"So tell me about my eyes" she said leaning back into the chair.
He nodded, he knew he owed it to her, "Let me get dressed."
-
He was back in the room in under two minutes and he found Max sitting on the couch with his wedding photo.
She didn't even bother to look up at him "You were so young, you don't look anything like you do now. Your eyes, they're…."
"I was 18. I had never killed anyone. I didn't know what loss meant. I had no clue about the world."
"She was really beautiful."
He smiled as he sat down in an armchair, "Yea, she's not too bad to be inspired from."
"So who was she?"
He shook his head, how did one answer that, "She was a scientist, drug research, AIDS actually for the last two years of her life. Brilliant woman, breezed through college finished in two and half years and she'd never go to class when I was home. She'd only go if there was a test, she'd stay by my side until I left again."
"Is that love or obsession?"
He sighed looking at her, thinking the disservice he had done her if she couldn't understand this after eleven years of being in the outside world, "Love Max, she was so afraid that the next time I left I wouldn't be coming home. She was always so worried that each memory would be our last. I never even thought about her being gone. It never even occurred to me that I could lose her."
"All I seem to think about is losing Logan." she didn't know why she said that, why she had let her guard down like that.
"You've lost a lot Max, you've lost a lot because of me. I taught you to fear the good because it doesn't last, but it can Max. I had 12 years with her, if I had lived those years waiting to lose her, our love would have paled in comparison to what it was."
She let out a sigh "It was all worth it? Charlie thought so too, even though he lost Tinga, he said it was still worth it."
"How long have you known Logan?"
"A year"
"Compare your life now to what it was." He waited a moment, "If it all disappeared tomorrow, would you still want to remember that year, if you were given the chance to relive it even though you knew it was going to end would you take it?"
She changed the subject, "Why'd you say you wished me could take me away from Manticore?"
His answer was simple, "You kids deserved better."
"You didn't say kids, you said me."
He knew these were the last moments for honesty, probably the final weeks of his life, Manticore was looking for him, what point was there to lie anymore? "Max, you were always like my daughter, no blood relation to me, but my wife's eyes. Eyes I'd always expected to see in our daughter, when you were born and you opened your eyes" he took a moment before he continued, "I saw my son in that first moment, it took weeks for your eyes to darken to her shade."
"What about my name?" Max asked in a hushed whisper
"I don't know how that happened." he shook his head, partly in shock that she knew, partly still in shock that it had happened. "You were so little, just a baby, how could I call you 452 when all you were was an infant. A little girl who looked like she was waiting for her parents to come take her home.
So one day when you wouldn't calm down, I said "It's okay Maxie" as I lifted you up to my shoulder and you stopped. I'd tried every position to get you to quiet down, I'd paced, I'd rocked, but when you heard your name you stopped. I made sure I stopped calling you Maxie by the time you were 18 months, a normal child wouldn't remember anything before 3. There are rare memories in some children when they're two…At18 months your brain isn't developed like it should be, even in you, that information should have been erased."
"Then I started calling myself Max"
He nodded, "I should have just taken you. I knew the first time I held you that you didn't belong there, there was something different in your eyes. All the other babies they could self sooth, you left them alone they stopped crying. You didn't, you needed to be held, but I just left you there." He wondered about the words coming out of his mouth, when was the last time he'd been this honest? It felt almost as if he had been drinking…
"You left all of us there. How could you do that to us? We were kids." The hurt showing in her eyes, her whole childhood stolen…
"Because I was training you to save lives, I knew that you kids would be unstoppable. We wouldn't need anymore yellow ribbons on old Oak trees." his words had a slightly sarcastic/harsh bite to them. "Spouses and kids wouldn't have spend night after night in fear that one they loved wouldn't come home, parents too.
My wife though, she was horrible…more than any other army wife I'd met, every time I'd come home, the moment she saw me ten years would lift off her face. You kids though," he shook his head, remembering his reason for joining Manticore in the first place, "you could have kept this country safe without sacrificing lives. My dad died when I was nine. It was a peace keeping mission, not even a war.
You know what I remember from when they approached me about this, I remembered my wife talking about what it felt like waiting to get the news I wasn't coming home, I remembered being that little kid and being told my father wasn't coming home, I knew I could save thousands of families from feeling that. It had made so much sense before you, before all of you kids."
"We were just kids though."
That seemed to shock him out of his memory, out of what he had believed in for so long, it had been easier when he had avoided seeing his kids. It had been different finding out about their lives from other people as he tracked them, not seeing them. Not playing with their children, not seeing how they loved others. "I know Max and I'm sorry, I truly am. You know the Greeks, the best army that ever existed…They took children at a young age and trained them…That's what I focused on when your eyes would look up at me in fear…This had been done thousands of years before…"
She laughed, "Ever hear of slavery? That was done for a while too…I should be going. Logan gave me a file for you. It's on your table. Good luck in staying alive." She stood needing to get away.
He laughed, he knew it wasn't happening for much longer, "Find someone to get that thing out of your neck Max, it's just a matter of time before they come looking for you again. I don't want to think of what Renfro would do if she got her hands on you."
She nodded and headed for the door, she turned back, "When's my birthday?"
He looked startled for a moment by her question, he'd never realized how much a simple date could mean. "July 24th 2000."
"Thanks" she said turning back, she kept herself from glancing back for one final look at the man who'd been her father and her greatest enemy before she closed the door. She knew she wasn't seeing him again and for some reason she had to swallow hard as she climbed onto her bike.
