"No, boss," one of them, an X-5 named Sheila, answered.
"I saw him talking with Luke a while ago," another answered, blinking first one, then a second, pair of eyelids.
"Thanks."
She walked down the hallway, intent on the science lab, when she ran into Luke. Or rather, he literally ran into her. "Luke, have you seen Logan?"
"Um yeah. Well, no. That is to say..."
"I need to find him," she interrupted kindly. She understood that Luke was a thinker, not a talker. And years at Manticore hadn't really done much for his social skills. It was better if she stuck to facts with him.
"Actually, I don't think he's feeling too well at this point."
"What do you mean?" she asked. She hated the thought of Logan being sick, because usually she was the cause of it.
"A touch of the flu, I suspect."
"How is that possible? The blood transfusions should make him immune to pretty much anything."
"Except this!" Luke shrugged his shoulders and forced out a laugh.
"I should probably check on him. He'll want to be a part of our meeting."
"I don't think that's such a good idea!" Luke practically shouted and grabbed her arm as she brushed past him. "I don't think he should be moved."
"How sick is he?" she asked. The uneasiness she was feeling intensified.
"Um..."
"Luke." It was all she could do to keep from slamming him against the wall.
"He's...he's bad, Max," he finally admitted.
"Is he back this way?" she asked as she took off down the hall to the lab. When she threw open the door (startling Dix and Joshua), she found him laid out on a lab bench sweating and twitching in a delirium.
Seeing him there, helpless, brought a wave of emotions, and tears began sliding down her cheeks. It was always this same thought in her head when either she or Logan were looking death in the eye: It wasn't enough time! Too much was left unsaid and undone between them.
She heard Luke enter behind her. "What's wrong with him?" she asked softly.
Luke looked at Dix, who stepped forward. "At this point, we're not sure," he said gently. Before they had inoculated Logan with an altered strain of the hantavirus, he had made all of them promise not to tell Max anything.
"If it doesn't work...I don't know if she can handle it. She's got enough on her mind right now." He had smiled, then, cocky and sure. "Besides, it is going to work, so there'll be nothing to tell her!"
"It might be the radiation fall-out, or stress, or anything," Dix added. He watched as Luke deftly swiped a couple of strands of Max's hair for later testing. If Logan pulled through...no, when Logan pulled through, they would need to see if the cure worked.
Max nodded, then scanned the lab. She found what she was looking for, and once she was confident her hand was protected by a latex glove, she went over to Logan and held his hand. His eyes snapped open but could not focus on her.
"Don't you fry that brain of yours," she warned him in a whisper. "You never know when I'll need saving again."
The problem with being "the boss" was that you were required to delegate. Max had a particular interest in finding Sandeman, and would have loved to be the one who kicked down his door and asked the first question, but no-one at Terminal City was dumb enough to think for a second that this mission was safe. What was that saying? Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice...
Shame on me. Since Max was seen as the mind and heart behind Terminal City, she would not be going. Instead, Alec the Habitual Screw-up would be accompanying Eve to Sandeman's under the pretense that she had hired a private detective (Alec) to find her father. If it was a trap, Eve didn't know anything that would endanger her, and Alec...well Alec was trained for this, supposedly. Had Alec ever successfully completed a mission in his life? Max pondered that while she waited. And waited.
And waited.
Waited for Logan to die, waited for Alec to call...she hated waiting.
Finally her cell phone rang.
"Go for Max."
"Maxie, we're here. Nothing seems out of place."
"Well if it seemed out of place, it'd be a pretty bad trap, wouldn't it?" Max hear Eve say. Briefly she wondered what had happened to make Logan's cousin so irritable toward Alec. Besides her problems with the mobster and the deal with her Father, that is. No, Max sensed Alec's fingerprints all over this one.
"We're going in," he told her, ignoring Eve's biting comment.
"Stay alert and be careful," Max replied emphatically, the butterflies in her stomach growing.
Waiting sucked.
"Hey, it's me," Alec replied, and Max could see his smirk in her mind's eye as she flipped the phone shut. She went back to waiting.