It was well into the night by the time the plane carrying Hannah Sukova landed at Seattle's Tacoma International Airport. Logan had refused to let Hannah find her own way to the towers. Hannah refused to let Logan to leave Max by herself even though Zack would be there. In her eyes Zack was still a child a responsibility, they all were. Logan finally compromised and agreed to let Bling pick her up from the airport. Logan described Bling to Hannah claming that his personal trainer was very hard to miss. Hannah was still apprehensive about missing him or going with the wrong person so Logan also described the Aztec to her and promised that Bling would be bearing a sign with Hannah's last name on in like pre-pulse limo drivers used to do. Hannah had finally agreed to the conditions last night and had promised to leave Mexico once Jace's affairs were settled.

Hannah gathered up the only two bags she had with her when the plane landed and went to meet Bling by the pickup and drop off area outside the terminal. Hannah had not planed on staying long and hopped that everything would go as planed. She walked up to a man holding a sign that read SUKOVA in big bold letters.

"I guess you're Bling?"

The man nodded and took both duffel bags from Hannah in one hand and lead Dr. Sukova overt to the Aztec. He noticed the woman checking her watch. "Troggle Towers aren't far from here."

"I'm just worried about Jace." Hannah said offhandedly.

"I'm sure Logan won't mind you calling her as soon as we get there." Bling smiled reassuringly.

*

Jace had been standing by the window lost in thought for almost an hour before her ears picked up a scuffling sound outside the door. Drawn prematurely out of her thoughts Jace was suddenly on edge. Her maternal instincts were running high. Coupled with her Manticore training Jace was now a mother lioness poised for the kill. She moved to stand at the side of the door. "Who's there?"

"Jace? It's doctor Geer. Hannah sent me over with a set of spare keys."

Hannah had forgotten to mention that and now Jace was growing suspicious. She glanced out the peephole bracing herself against the door and saw what appeared to be a mere boy fitting Hannah's description dangling a pair of keys.

"What's your pet name?" Jace barked through the door.

"My what?" The boy looked confused.

Jace tried again. "What does your little brother call you?"

"Sneaker." The boy smiled fondly but there was a trace of sadness in his eyes. "Are you going to let me in now?"

"Affirmative." Jace unlocked the door, unbolted the two deadbolt locks, and took the chain off of the door opening it up. "Do you have any ID?"

Lucas laughed. "Good old Hannah. She's got you paranoid that I'd be impersonated?" He asked flipping out an ID card for Jace.

"Something like that." Jace nodded inspecting the card and then stepping aside to let the boy in.

"That's what comes from working at a place like Manticore I suppose." Lucas nodded self-consciously running his left hand through his spiky hair.

"Or from having escaped from there." Jace shot back her answer.

Lucas gapped at her. "Hannah was serious? You're an X5?"

Jace nodded and turned her head exposing her barcode to him.

The boy actually smiled. "It's an honor to meet and get to work with you Ma'am."

Jace cringed at his choice of words. "If you want to stay on this assignment you'd better stick to calling me Jace, Kido."

"Sorry." The teenager actually blushed.

"Don't be just cut the militaristic crap." Jace went over to the couch and invited him to sit with her. "How do you know Hannah?"

"My father worked with her. I grew up at Manticore." The boy looked less the pleased at this revelation. Both people in the room shuddered involuntarily at the sound of the word.

"So where does your father work now?" Jace tried making small talk and it was a better subject to talk about then the weather.

"He doesn't." The boy looked down at the floor. "He was KIA at Manticore."

"I'm," Jace paused to look at the boy. "Sorry."

"Don't be. I'm a loner. My mother and brother were killed in a robbery soon after the pulse hit. The only thing growing up like this has left me with is a strong hatred fro that hell on earth that you grew up in."

"Then we have a few things in common." Jace actually smiled. "I think I'm going to like having you here in Hannah's absence."

It was Lucas's turn to make small talk until the time of day when Hannah usually examined Jace. Lucas asked about her siblings and she told him what she knew about what was happening to Max. Jace liked the teenager and actually opened up about Hector to him for a while. It had turned out that the boy had known Hector when he was younger so the two had a lot to talk about.

*

Zack and Logan were engaged in small talk. Zack was passing the room When Bling opened the door to the penthouse apartment and held the door open for Hannah. When Hannah walked through the door Zack froze a hundred small flashbacks playing through his head at once.

"Zack?" Hannah asked staring at him in disbelief.

Zack nodded a greeting. "Hannah." The X5 actually allowed himself the luxury of smiling. He had known Hannah the longest out of all of the X5's and the woman had always had a way of putting Zack at ease.

"I never thought I'd see any of you again after I saw Max in '09." Hannah smiled. "How are you Zack?"

Zack shrugged.

"Same old Zack." Hannah grinned. "How's Max?"

Zack responded the same way he would have if she had said; 'Report X5-599.' "Her status is stable but has gone unchanged since we last spoke."

"That's good." Hannah nodded.

"Except for the delirium." Logan spoke up.

"I was getting there." Zack snapped.

"What's going on Zack?" Hannah asked.

Zack again responded as if she had made a formal request of him. "Ma'am she seems to believe that all we were taught about the future at Manticore has become reality. She believes that the escape never took place and that we are sectioned off into separate barracks and only allowed contact in exercises and breeding cycles. She thinks that they're experimenting on her again. She thinks Logan is just a prince in her imagination destined to take her away one-day. She thinks that right now she's in the officers quarters because there was no room in the infirmary."

"At eases Zack." Hannah blinked. "That does not sound good at all. What do we know about the effects of this probe? What exactly was it supposed to do?"

Zack sighed. "It makes the user feel invincible. It makes them faster, stronger, smarter."

"So much like an X5." Hannah nodded.

"Kind of." Logan spoke up.

"So it made Max into a supper X5."

"Yes." Logan nodded. "The problem being that it interfaces directly with the users central nervous system. It overloaded the person's central nervous system and ultimately killed the user. They thought that an X5 would be the key to figuring it all out but they were wrong."

Zack was still staring at Hannah in almost disbelief.

"Yes I am real Zack." Hannah reached out to touch him but Zack jumped back with the speed and grace of anX5.

"Don't" was all he could muster up a bit short of breathe. "Max is the most important thing right now."

"Right." Hannah nodded. "Where are you keeping her?"

"In the guest bedroom." Logan spoke up. "I've turned it into a kind of small triage center in preparation for your arrival."

"Can I see her?" Hannah turned to Zack for permission, guidance and an escort.

"I'll take you in." Zack stated. "But not like that. Do you have a lab coat with you?"

"Sure and a set of scrubs, why?" Hannah nodded.

"Max thinks that she's still in Manticore your showing up in civilian clothes will just confuse her." Zack said bluntly.

"That makes sense." Hannah nodded gathering up on of her bags and heading into what she assumed was the bathroom to change. "We don't need to upset her any further."

"She's extremely wary and jumpy." Zack agreed.

"Paranoia stemming from the confusion of her delirium." Hannah spoke up from behind the closed door of the bathroom.

"Right." Zack shrugged." She attacked Bling with a knife." He said by way of a warning.

"That's why you're coming in there with me." Hannah said when she came out of the bathroom in her scrubs and lab coat. "In case she gets violent." Zack nodded his back was turned to Hannah and he was looking out the window. When he turned and saw her the rest of the apartment dropped away and a sharp intake of air escaped from his lips. Zack had been twelve when his first heat cycle hit, the others had been ten and seven respectively. Zack had gone through about six heat cycles before the escape. It gave him the experience he needed to help the others when their firsts came about on the outside. Zack's first cycle had been fourteen days of hell, anguish and isolation. He had been locked into on of the subbasement rooms where they had keep the X2's before they cut their numbers down to only four and moved them into the basement. He was under strict observation and it was constantly explained to him what was happening and that nothing could be done about it until the others got older. Trapped in the room Hannah was the only person who came to visit him and even the simple taking of his vital signs daily, the simple touch of her cool skin against his own burning oversensitive skin had helped him though it. He had been given hormone supplements and various other things to help him through it, but there was no satisfaction and his second cycle only came on harder then the first. She had been extremely nice to him during this time and had helped Zack greatly by visiting him at least twice a day. In his own way Zack had loved her for saving him then. Hannah was dressed now very much as she had been then and that was what had triggered his brief flashback and momentary anguish and frustration.

"What?" Zack blinked. Hannah and Logan had been talking to him. He hadn't heard a word they'd said and his hands shook slightly.

"Zack?" Hannah could tell by the look in his eyes that something was wrong.

"It's nothing." Zack snapped.

"No. It's not. What is it Zachary?" Hannah pushed him.

"Don't call me that!" Zack snapped. "He called me that an I hated it."

Hannah thought for a moment looking down at her garb. What would this make the X5 think about? Countless experimentations and surgeries? No. It was something else entirely. His posture and breathing gave it away in some aspect. Hannah saw a brief flash of the ragging boy in one of the padded rooms that had held the X2's until their numbers were cut down to a mere four. "Oh Zack."

Zack stiffened and bristled at the sound of her voice she too had remembered the incident.

"I know it was hard." She went on.

"No harder then it was to deal with on the outside."

Logan and Bling were lost.

"You ready to do this?" Hannah asked.

Zack nodded and squared his shoulders. "Yes."

Thinking about his first heat cycle and then going in to see Max after the feelings he had finally come to terms with was going to be hard. It didn't matter how hard it would be for him. What mattered was getting Hannah in to see Max. His feelings didn't matter now. Not at all.

"Let me go in first." Zack halted Hannah's progress outside the door.

Zack went inside the room and saw Max. She was perched on the end of the bed going through the content of the hope chest that was there. Max jumped as she heard the door shut behind him. She shut the chest and lay back on the pillow winching slightly. Curiosity killed the cat.

"So have you figured out who's room this is yet?" Zack leaned casually up against the wall.

Max yawned and stretched putting forth the fallacy that she had just been woken up. "What sir?"

"Don't play games with me, I saw you Maxie."

Max thought but didn't move from her place on the bed. "Not Lydecker's because there aren't any firearms. One of the classroom instructors perhaps maybe General Needleman the sociology instructor, or Dolmen the computer instructor."

Zack grinned. "Close enough."

"You know whose room this is?"

"Yes but I'm not at liberty to tell you." Zack did something between a grin and a grimace. How could he tell her that the room belonged to someone who she now thought was a figment of her imagination and who she had previously loved? He had to protect her.

"I figured." Max chewed on one of her fingernails, which were too long, and she was sure she'd get reprimanded for.

"Hannah's here to see you." Zack said snapping to attention and standing at the foot of the bed.

"Already?" Max yawned and winched, she wasn't looking forward to this.

"Yes, what's wrong Maxie."

"Nothing let her in." Max paled slightly.

Zack went to the door and let Hannah in.

"Ma'am." Max moved to get up.

"At ease X5-452." Hannah said walking into the room. "You need your rest to conserve your strength."

Zack was amazed at Hannah's transformation and reversion to her past self.

"I'm going to have to examine you now. Strip down." Hannah handed Max a hospital gown.

Zack was there but modesty was irrelevant. After all it was nothing her breeding partner had not seen before. Max stripped down to just her underwear and put on the gown tugging self-consciously on her hair, which was too long, and she was sure they would cut it again soon.

Zack blinked and his eyes widened slightly as Max stood there bare-chested and confident for a moment before putting on the gown. The image along with the memory of the time he was no longer a child along with his feelings for her was almost overwhelming. He tried hard to close his mind off to the flood of emotions.

Hannah was aware of all of this and choked back a laugh.

Max lay back down on the bed and winched again rolling her neck.

Hannah examined Max taking her blood presure, pulse, temperature, reaction time in reflexes, eyesight and took a blood sample. Then she did a complete physical exam. Max reacted less to Hannah touching the bump on her neck then she had when Zack had touched it. Max's face remained placid but her eyes brimmed with tears and her body tensed.

"Does that hurt Max?" Hannah asked.

Max raised an eyebrow at the sound of her own name. "Ma'am no Ma'am."

"Is this uncomfortable?" Hannah tried again.

"A little." Max answered. She blinked hard and yawned a few stray tears squeezing out of her eyes.

Zack had seen what Hannah had written down as Max's temperature on her chart. Max's temperature was two degrees higher then it had been when Bling had first checked her out.

Hannah loaded another needle with an antibiotic Max's body was definitely showing signs of fighting off some sort of infection. The shot would definitely help her.

"No. No more needles." Max's whole body tensed.

"It's okay Maxie the medicine will help you." Zack spoke up.

Max looked at him as if to ask if he was sure and Zack gave her a stiff nod.

"No." Max said softly as Hannah moved to inject her.

"You can not resist X5-452 I have very strict orders concerning this." Hannah spoke up.

Max stiffened but yielded to Hannah who had mixed the medication with a mild sedative and Max fell under the concoction's spell very quickly. Max slept soundly and Zack and Hannah left her to heal and went back into the main room.

Logan looked up. "So what's the diagnosis doc?"

Hannah smirked and shook her head. "It's too early to tell Logan."

*

Lucas looked over the charts in his hand that Hannah had drawn up on Jace over the past two weeks. "Are you sure you're alright with this?"

Jace shrugged. "I have little choice modesty has become irrelevant."

Lucas smiled. "Hector would have been proud of your strength."

Jace's eyes brimmed with tears and she simply nodded stiffly choking back the flood of emotions his words had produced.

"He was a great man." Lucas nodded in agreement to Jace's statement.

"Let's get this over with." Lucas smiled. "It seems almost useless. You're an X5 always in good health and you seem fine to me.

Jace smiled and rubbed her swollen stomach. "It's not myself I'm worried about."

Lucas nodded and went through the standard examination that Jace had become accustomed to from Hannah doing it daily. Lucas examined Jace taking her blood presure, pulse, temperature, reaction time in reflexes, eyesight and took a blood sample. Then he did a complete physical exam and hooked Jace up to a fetal heart rate monitor.

"Everything seems normal, as normal as it can be." Lucas smiled reassuringly.

Jace smiled also. "That's all I needed to know."

"The only problem I see is that your physically further along now then you should be and there's the fact that you're still experiencing morning sickness. It all seems normal in accordance to what Hannah has observed with you."

Jace tisked, "I wish I could talk to Tinga about it. She's been through this all already."

"Tinga?" Lucas arched an eyebrow?"

"One of my sisters." Jace explained.

"An X5 has already had a child and Hannah isn't drawing from that information?"

Jace shook her head. "Nope up until yesterday I didn't even know about her."

I'll have to talk to her about that at some time once she's settled in Seattle."

Jace grinned. She really did like this boy better then Hannah for the simple reason that he was not so restrained by protocol as she was. Jace would have loved it if Zack would have allowed her to speak with Tinga but Jace knew it would be a battle to get him to allow her to do it. A battle she wasn't sure she could win considering that they were talking about Zack and Tinga probably thought that Jace was still stuck in Manticore.

*

Zack reacted before the sound came he tensed sensing what was coming. There was an unmistakable change in the sir current in the apartment and a smell only he could detect. He was halfway down the hallway to the guestroom before Hannah, Logan or Bling heard the sound of Max's agonized scream that filled the air in the apartment. The three were behind Zack by the time he had the door open and had moved to Max's bedside.

Max was awake, her face pale, her eyes wide starring at the pillow she had been resting on comfortably only moments before, a hand clasping the back of her neck. The white pillowcase was covered in a sheen of bright red blood. Max was covered in a thin sheen of sweat and her body convulsed freely but slightly. Her tremors came from a sense of fear. A thin trickle of blood oozed its way out of her nose and over her bottom lip. Max matched her gaze to Zack's and began to cry softly. Her own gaze was wild and unfocused.

Hannah moved to Max's side and examined the back of her neck. This was the source of the blood on the pillow and Max's anguish. The bump that had been there had become an open sore with a small metal spike looking much like a drill bit poking out from it.

Max tore away from Hannah's touch. She shot a look of utter fear and loathing at Bling and Logan. She fled to Zack and stood behind him. "Why are they doing this to me?"

Zack turned to her. "Maxie it's not them."

"They're Manticore." She was looking at Bling and Hannah. "And he's just a figment of my imagination." She indicated Logan. "They're all punishing me."

Max wavered on her feet and Zack reached out to steady her. She clung to Zack's arm.

"Don't let them hurt me anymore Big Brother." She had begun to sound panicked. "Why are they trying to remove my barcode, don't they know it won't come off? It's etched into our genetic code."

"You know I can't promise you that Maxie. Manticore doesn't take orders from me but I will protect you as always." Zack said holding her close.

Max took everyone in the room by surprise by turning and hugging Zack tightly.

"They're going to reprimand me for this for sure." Max stiffened and stepped away from him. "I'm being overemotional. It's intolerable behavior. It's just that we only get to see each other in exercises and recreation and at meals or when they want us to try and copulate. I miss you and Ben, Krit, Locke, Jessie, Braden and Zane, everyone." Max shook her head not entirely sure of what she was saying anymore but she was sure she shouldn't say anymore in the presence of the enemy.

"It's okay Maxie." Zack hugged her again.

"No. No it's not okay Zack they're going to kill me. They're going to kill you all of us, one by one. We're weak, flawed, maybe Ben was right and we're all nomalies." She broke away from Zack. "I have to get out of here!"

"Max don't let them hear you talk like that. Wait until your well." Zack insisted.

"Well? Ha. Zack it's been days since I've spared. How am I going to get better if I'm wasting away and getting weak?"

"You're not weak Maxie. This is Manticore not you. You've always been able to beat them." Zack said softly.

"I want them to leave." Max screamed spinning on the group. "Get out!" She sunk to her knees still shaking but Zack caught her before she hit the ground.

Zack helped Max into bed as the others filed out of the room. "You need to rest Max."

"Why does everyone keep telling me that? I don't want to rest." Max yawned despite her claim. "Why aren't any of the others checking in on me?" Her eyes conveyed her pain this time it was different from the physical. "Have they forgotten about me?"

"No Maxie the others could never forget about you. It's not their responsibility." Zack said quickly. "They have other duties. I'm the commanding officer."

"Then don't you have a responsibility to be with them too?"

"I am while I'm away from you and while you sleep. It's always been different with you Maxie you know that." Zack smiled down at her.

"I don't want to talk about this." Max snapped turning away from him. "Just don't leave me alone with them."

"I promise Maxie I won't leave you alone at all someone will be here with you at all times." Zack said wondering to himself how he would manage to pull that promise off.

Max nodded and took Zack's hand holding it tightly. Eventually Max had fallen into another restless sleep. Bling seemed to be the only safe person that Zack could use to implement his plan. He could take over the watches when Zack was attending to his other 'duties'. He just might be able to convince Max that Bling was Braden if he could teach Bling a few things first.