Timebomb Central

Thanks must go out to the wonderful support of Roon, Kiwi, Helgz, Spike and Zac.

Roon is to be credited with me getting this bugger started again.

Chapter Six: It all catches up with you

The faster she let the bike run, the slower the miles felt like they were passing. The trip back to Terminal City seemed endless, the growing fear that gnawed away inside Max was starting to overwhelm her. She carefully pushed the panic back, focusing on those back home, waiting for her. When she finally saw the sign marking the city limits of Seattle, she slowed her bike to a less insane speed. Slightly less.

Navigating the streets, she knew what her first priority would be. The hospital was to be her first destination. She needed to see that Alec was alright. Leaving him in such a state had been against her gut instincts, but someone had needed to seek out the answers. The fences that surrounded TC were a welcome sight. Their normally restricting presence was more a reassuring relief to Max. Nearly there, nearly home.

Pulling up outside the hospital, she shut off the engine. The thud of her heart in her chest was almost painful. Now she was finally here, she was scared to go in. Steeling herself, she swung off the bike and approached the entrance. A quick glance around the compound showed no signs of life, but that wasn't unusual with people often keeping low to avoid the stray idiot bullets from the red-neck ordinaries. Pushing through the doors, she fully expected to walk into a lobby full of people.

The place was deserted.

Max entered the deathly quiet halls with trepidation. The hairs on the back of her neck were beginning to stand on end. She moved from room to room, becoming increasingly more terrified as each room proved to be as desolate as the previous one. The silence around her felt like it would smother her. Everywhere appeared empty, every bed made and starkly vacant.

She broke into a frantic run. She needed to know what had happened.

How could she have let anything happen?

Her heart in her mouth, she tried to yell out. Somehow she needed to make some one hear her, she needed to know if anyone was still around.

Her voice came out as a near soundless croak.

Since the moment she had left TC this had been what she had feared most. That she would be back too late.

The place was deserted.

She was truly alone.

Reaching the final room- she came to a dead stop.

Her onward flight halted by a vision that made her blood run cold.

Joshua...lashed to a hospital bed.

Heavy chains were crossed over his bare chest, cutting through the skin and causing trickles of blood to fall in tiny rivulets to the sweat soaked sheet below him. His mouth was gagged preventing him from voicing his pain. His eyes wretched and totally wild. He looked feral.

As his body twisted in agony she moved instinctively forward to try to calm him but a step away from the bed something held her back. Her hands couldn't reach for him. She couldn't make herself take that final step.

Shaking herself mentally, she pushed through the invisible barrier in her mind and made it to his side. Firmly she placed her hands on his chest trying to hold him still, to let him see that she was here for him. Her hands made no impact. Her feeble actions couldn't still the writhing transhuman. She felt helpless.

She couldn't save them.

Then she heard it...a sound of life.

The rhythmic sound of footsteps coming down the empty hall towards her.

The doorway framed a sight she so desperately had hoped to see- Alec walking toward her.

Running forward, Max felt her heart leap in her chest- he was alive- he was still here waiting for her. As she neared him something, some instinct, made her look him in the eyes. The words that made her want to die came tumbling from his lips-

"You're too late, Maxie."

The insanity that rang out from the hazel orbs had her skidding to halt at his feet as she tried to back peddle away from the unpredictable soldier with the face of a friend.

As Alec reached his hand out and grabbed for her, she screamed. His claw-like grip cut into her as he caught her shoulder and started to shake.

"You left us here to rot".

The accusation broke through his crazy facade, the truth she saw in the words struck home. Max in her anguish cried out. Her mouth moved in a silent apology as the hot tears of guilt streamed down her face.

She'd abandoned her friends.

A tiny sound broke into her thoughts, out of place in the hospital hall. Alec's face began to fade as consciousness regained its grasp on her mind.

Max lifted her head from her arms, as the hand shaking her loosened its grip. The sudden deathly silence around her broke her from her reverie. A room full of strangers watched curiously as the dark haired girl who had been screaming only moments before let a mask of hooded cautiousness drop.

Reorientating herself, Max realized that the claw like grip on her shoulder was not Alec's hand but that of the diner waitress trying to wake her. She remembered now. She'd stopped for gas and for a coffee to try and stave off the increasing need to sleep- but the avoidance of any slumber had obviously overwhelmed her shark DNA. Normally she hardly slept but something dark was drawing her into slumber no matter how hard she fought.

"Are you okay, Miss?" The concerned eyes of the elderly waitress bore into her. Hastily swiping away the tears that were on her cheeks, she began to back out of the place. The eyes of all the patrons glued to the strange girl as she turned and ran. The concerned look on the waitress's face followed as she turned and ran to her bike. Getting back was urgent even her subconscious was telling her that now.

****

The hospital was blanketed in a hushed silence. The silent corridors gave the impression of serenity- this was truly deceptive.

The anxiety level throughout the transgenic community had continued to rise. T.C. lacked a true leader at the moment. The place felt empty and aimless with both Max and Alec absent. It wasn't their leadership that was missing, the transhumans knew they could cope adequately without their X5 friends. Yet the hope and the drive that the two lent to the transgenic's future was sorely missing without them there to guide it.

In headquarters, Mole and Joshua looked across at the tired faces that were dotted around the different workstations. They needed to find some sort of solution fast. The waiting game was just upping the level of insanity. Angel had sent Mole and Joshua away from Alec's bedside. After days of absolutely no change in his condition- whilst things had been becoming increasingly more desperate within the community- she believed they could do more good keeping things together so there could be something for Max and Alec to return to. It was a task that gave them a purpose, something to distract them from the situation, a way of coping with the fact Alec's chances of survival were becoming slim. Something no one wanted to acknowledge but was in the back of all their minds.

Many of the wounded that were occupying the beds in the hospital had been caught up in fights brought about by over hyped adrenalin behaviour. Mole had hit upon a plan. A way to take the edge off the constant adrenalin everyone was pumping in fear. The training grounds were crowded around the clock. Physical exhaustion was the personal target of everyone who attended. The chance to collapse mindlessly into slumber without fear of being haunted by horror proved a worthy enticement. They had all seen a lot, been to hell and back, but Manticore had never made them this scared. Occasionally the scuffles still broke out, but the number of incidents seem to have peaked and was now starting to fall. The hospital was grateful not to be dealing with more incoming casualties when the numbers of individuals reporting with sleep disturbances was taking up most of their resources.

****

Things were starting to fall into place. Dix could see a pattern beginning to form. From all the seemingly unrelated information he had fed into the database about the victims, two single hits of information seemed to be shared in common by all those so far killed. They were only small clues and he didn't yet know what the hell they meant but it gave them some sort of starting point to work from. The idea of a murderer had been dispensed with. These were self-inflicted deaths but driven by some sort of sinister means that they had yet to grasp.

The clues weren't much but starting from the most obvious point, Dix had found that all the victims were born in Manticore.

This seemed to be a only a small clue, but it also suggested that the humans seemed to be untargeted by what ever this was and unlikely to be harmed. Unfortunately, it also tended to point the finger at some sort of assassination plot specifically designed to harm the transgenics. Someone trying to kill them wasn't unusual, it happened every day. The added mental break downs were the side that was perplexing to even Dix. That was more the work of a terrorist, someone who would torture their victims before killing.

The more sketchy details that seemed to correlate across the victim database were that it appeared that all those effected were away on missions from the Manticore base when Renfro had ordered the lock down and incineration. This seemed illogical. It would have been more understandable if it had been those who had been inside at the time. Some sort of poison that had leaked, some sort chemical that had exploded in the labs and contaminated them all. That would have made more sense. Instead it was those who were on the outside. Except for Max. She was the one that didn't seem to fit the profile.

He turned back to his fact and figures. Surely there must be more in the data. Something that would give them a definite clue.

****

The moment Max reached sight of T.C.'s perimeter fences panic had begun to overwhelm her. Her nightmarish vision was only that, she kept trying to tell herself that calmly but the hysteria was growing. It had worked for most of the trip but now that she was in the home stretch, the fear of what she was about to find set her mind into a spin again. Her trip back had seemed the longest hours in her life. The bike had been cursed for not being fast enough, for not getting her back to safety quickly enough, to where she needed to be. Emotions of fear and confusion raged beneath the surface of her mind. The turmoil taking charge of her concentration nearly caused her to unseat herself on more than one occasion

She slipped unseen in through the back door. She needed to see him, to know he was still waiting for her, to let him know she was back. When she reached his doorway, she hesitated, frightened to look and see the room empty. The sight of him brought such overwhelming relief. With a repressed sob, Max stumbled across the room to Alec's side. His pale face ashen against the white sheets. She lay her forehead against his and whispered to the unconscious man.

"Alec I am so scared."

Her only answer was the constant beep of the machine beside his bed.

"I have no idea what is happening to me but I don't want it to overtake either of us." Shiny tears on her cold cheeks dripped onto Alec's face.

"You've got to help me. Please fight it ...give me some hope." Her windblown lips pressed gently onto the hot sweaty skin she'd been resting on. Taking a measure of comfort in touching him and knowing he was still alive when she was back.

She needed answers. She needed to see Angel ...NOW.

Rational was definitely not the state her mind was in as she pushed open the double doors of the hospital lobby. Startled faces surrounded her but they moved back as she purposefully strode down the corridor. At least it was lined with people and not empty as her dreams had haunted her with. Breaking into a run she hit the first interference in her plan as she came near the closed door of the doctor.

Angel lifted her head from her arms. They'd been acting as a pillow while she tried to catch a few minutes nap at her desk. She was mildly disorientated for a few seconds before she realised what had woken her. A commotion could be heard beyond her door in the corridor. She was on her feet and halfway across the room when the doors burst open and framed in their place was Max. The X5 looked haggard and dirty- but more startling than that was the look of insane desperation in her eyes.

Angel had no time to react before the dark haired girl held her firmly grasped by each upper arms and was shaking her painfully.

"Tell me you've worked it out- tell me we're not gonna all die!!"

"Calm down, Max." Angel tried to soothe the frantic woman but her words seemed unable to penetrate the panic that gripped their returned leader. She sighed with relief as security, a constant necessity at the minute in the hospital, reached the open doors and began to move forward.

Breaking Max's grasp, the two burly X5s held the struggling woman as Angel swiftly moved to her desk. She picked up a hypersyringe. Palming it she moved back to where Max was being held and lifting her empty hand she placed it on Max's arm- soothing and distracting the girl. Then slowly she lifted her other hand, the one that held the syringe, to Max's neck. The near instantaneous effect of the sedative was the reason Angel kept it with her. It was more effective than a bullet for bringing down an adrenalin high transgenic. She had never ever thought that she'd need it on Max.

The leader of T.C was carried into the infirmary, her limp body placed on one of the few vacant beds. Firmly she was strapped down for now till the effects of the sedative wore off and Angel could get a chance to find out what had happened. Given the behaviour the normally controlled Max had displayed, it would seem apparent that she too had become a victim of the madness that gripped Alec.

****

The week-old paper didn't seem to hold anything of vital importance, but the dark haired woman seemed totally engaged in it. One small article, a passage about the death of a pretty girl in Canada, seemed to have really captured her attention. She lightly brushed her fingers through her curls and nervously fiddled with the scarf on her neck. Pulling it a little lower at the back, she made sure it met the collar of her dress. They slid down and to cover the telltale lines.

As she read on she sensed a presence behind her. A deep and threatening voice whispered close to her ear. "I know what you are."

Stiffening slightly, she turned with a smile plastered on. She slid her glasses off and focused on the man standing mere inches from the back of her chair. Something in the way she looked at him dazed him, it shook his focus from the barely hidden tattoo on her neck to her welcoming eyes.

"Don't you need to get home now?" Shaking his head, he then nodded to her. "Forget what you've seen, and have a nice day". She sent him on his way with a smile. The look of disorientated bewilderment clear on his face as he moved off along the aisle and out into the street.

She sipped the last of her coffee and collected her bag. She had somewhere she needed to be.