--Previously in LET--

"We nearly caught up with her just outside the city. We know she stole a car, but no one saw the direction she went." Brenam stopped speaking when White snorted.

"I thought you were supposed to be 'one of the most brilliant team leaders in the history of our people,'" he taunted, quoting what one of the female Elders had said when recommending Brenam's team. "I think it should be painfully obvious where 452 is going."

White turned, eyes glazed with satisfaction. "You will assemble a new team, go to Seattle and find 452. You will bring her back to me unless you want to join him," he ordered, kicking Dyman's lifeless body for emphasis. When neither made to leave, White yelled, "NOW!"

Alec led her through the bedroom and to the front door. "You ready for the best breakfast you can get in Seattle?" he grinned.

"Yeah, I'm starving! But before all that, mind if we take a trip outside the gates for a few minutes? I left someone out there that I can't wait to see again." Alec's heart nearly stopped at her declaration. Had she picked up someone else on her trip to Seattle?

Struggling to keep his voice from betraying any emotion, he asked, "And who might that be?" She smiled mysteriously and nothing could have prepared him for what she said next.

"My baby."

Chapter Fifteen: The Echo of What Was

Alec stared at the smiling brunette as she walked out the door, his mouth hanging open in utter shock. What'd she say? Her baby! As he slowly came around, he rushed out of the apartment after her. Falling into step beside her down the stairs, he allowed his thoughts to flow freely from his mouth.

"Your what! Max, two months isn't enough time to - I mean, unless you - before you left!" Alec stuttered, unable to think coherently as Max exited the building. He stopped behind her for a few seconds as she continued to walk forward, headed for the gates. "A baby?"

Max laughed, never breaking stride. "Not that kind of baby!" she threw over her shoulder at Alec, who was currently jogging to catch up to her again. She grinned, offering no further explanation and leaving Alec all the more confused.

"If it isn't that kind of baby, then what kind of baby is it?" he asked as they reached the gates. His hands clenched at his sides, he told himself that Max couldn't possibly have had a child. After all, apparently it wasn't that kind of baby.

Several moments of walking in almost perfect silence - it would've been perfect silence had Alec not grunted incoherently every few minutes - found them standing just outside of an abandoned building. "You left your 'baby' under cardboard and garbage?" Alec mumbled as Max began throwing assorted pieces of paper and boxes aside. "HEY!" he yelped when a discarded newspaper sailed only inches from his head. A quick 'sorry' was all he received from her before she squealed in delight. Max doesn't squeal. What the hell?

Max stepped aside with a flourish of her arm. "This is my baby," she stated proudly. Alec gaped at the black Ninja motorcycle. He looks kinda like a fish the way his mouth keeps opening and closing like he's gonna say something. She smiled at the comparison, waiting for him to finally find whatever words he was looking for.

"Where did you get that?" Alec walked closer to survey the bike that looked almost identical to the one Max had treasured so dearly.

Puzzled over his reaction to the machine, Max answered hesitantly. "I, uh, borrowed it from an impound yard somewhere in the state." Her nose crinkled as she tried to remember the name of the town. "Yakima, I think. Yeah, an impound yard in Yakima. On my way here."

Alec grinned as he discovered that this wasn't a bike that looked like Max's Ninja. It was Max's Ninja. There was no mistaking the customizations Max had ordered for her precious 'baby'. He remembered teasing her often about how she loved the bike more than him. Now I bet I could win that argument, he thought bitterly. Max was staring at him in confusion when he looked up and he realized that he hadn't said anything for a good five minutes.

"Um, sorry. It's just that - well, this was your bike before you...left." Max's eyes widened as she alternated between looking at the bike and at him. "You, uh...had to leave it behind in Yakima a while back and I guess it got taken to the impound."

"You're sure it's the same bike?" Alec nodded in response. Despite her words of doubt, she felt like Alec was only telling her something she'd been almost sure of already. Her memory of racing down the street side by side with Hazel-Eyes, whom she now knew was Alec, came back to her. "This might seem like a weird question, but...do you have a green bike?"

"Used to before it got K.I.A.," he grinned. "You rememberin' something?" He tried to keep his voice neutral, hiding the hopefulness he felt.

"Kind of. I think I remember us racing through a city." She closed her eyes, letting herself get lost in the memory. The way the wind blew through her hair as she sped down the street on the sleek black bike. The way Alec looked back at her and grinned when he would pull out in front of her and the way she would laugh when she gained the lead again. The way afterwards they would go back to their place and make - What the fuck? Her eyes snapped open quickly and she blushed as if she'd said out load what she'd seen in her mind's eye.

The crimson flush to her face amused Alec and he wondered if she remembered what those nights of racing and the rush of adrenaline would do to them. She turned her head to hide her face from his gaze and that was answer enough. "Oh yeah, we used to drive the sector cops crazy with all the noise." He barely stifled a laugh as she whirled to face him, the blush on her cheeks even more prominent. Instead he flashed her a smile and said, "People called and complained about the sounds of the engines revving waking them up."

"Oh, the bikes were loud." Max breathed a sigh of relief and Alec's grin somehow managed to get wider.

"Uh, yeah. What did you think I was talking about?" Max only shook her head and grasped the handle bars of the bike, intent on not conversing until they got back into their apartment. Our apartment, with the one bed. Then it hit her like the proverbial ton of bricks - Alec and I were a couple - are a couple. I am such an idiot. It wasn't until then that she'd stopped to consider just how hard her sudden memory loss would be on him.

She glanced at him as she walked the bike back inside the gates. Seeing the hurt and confusion that he was seemingly trying to hide made her want to comfort him, hug him, just do something so he didn't hurt anymore. Instead of showing her emotions, she went with the more comfortable if less instinctual approach - small talk.

"So, um..." she started, unable to think of what to say. She smiled deviously and said, "Last night we were talkin' and you said you'd tell me the story of how we met. How 'bout you tell me now?" Max watched as Alec's uncertain visage regained that confident smirk she'd noticed he seemed to perpetually wear.

I thought she was trying to get away from the sexual topic, he mused silently. "Well, um...at Manticore - the facility where you were reindoctrinated, the genetic lab was destroyed." Max stopped walking and gave him a look that said 'what the hell?' Shit, this is going to be more work that I thought. He ran a hand through his hair, which had gotten significantly longer since Max had been gone. "Well, the genetic lab was where they kept all of the DNA information so they could make more transgenics like us."

"And it was destroyed? Why would someone want to destroy that?"

Alec chuckled low and shook his head. "Well, you weren't too happy with the way they were treating the transgens at the base."

"I did it?" No wonder that bitch Renfro put me in a box for a week. "Okay...so what does all that have to do with how we met?"

"Well...you were captured after the incident and...well, they needed some way to make more transgenics, so they figured the old-fashioned method was worth a try." He wiggled his eyebrows at her and then winked. "We were paired together as breeding partners."

"What! That's sick!" Breeding partners? That's so archaic. And why do I have the urge to hit him on the shoulder right now?

"Wow, déja vû." Max looked at him questioningly and he was looking forward to telling the rest of the story. "That's pretty much what you said at the time too."

After several seconds of just walking Max took the initiative. "Okay, the suspense is killing me," she stated, rolling her eyes. "What happened then?"

Alec's eyes sparkled and Max realized they were even more breathtaking than she'd remembered. "Let's see if I can remember the exact chain of events. I walked in unannounced, told you I was X5-494 and that we were breeding partners and that we were supposed to 'copulate every night until you get pregnant.' You said 'That's sick!', I took of my shirt and you kicked me across the room. I believe your exact words when I asked you 'what the hell was that?' were 'the only kind of physical contact you and me are gonna have.'"

Max burst out laughing at that point. "Well from what you say, what the hell did you expect? Me to say 'Yes sir, take me now'?"

"Not really. You had...a bit of a reputation for not takin' shit. Not even from your commanding officers, might I add." That was one thing he'd always loved her for; she took orders well enough when they were the right ones, but she led even better.

"I don't know how much that sounds like me now though." Her traitorous mind took her back to Amarillo, the way she'd done everything they'd said - except for White. No, him she'd hated with a passion and shown just how much. "Well, actually, maybe it does. I kind of went AWOL...again."

"No, Maxie, you didn't go AWOL, you escaped. That wasn't a real military base, at least not one of ours. Those people were the enemy." Alec knew he shouldn't be bringing up what happened there or giving her more new information to digest, but she did have a right to know that she wasn't a bad soldier.

"But they knew things, about my life. Things that I couldn't even remember. And they've been right so far." She looked down at her feet in shame. Let's just hope they aren't right about me being the death of you...literally. When she leveled her gaze again, she was staring at the steps of their apartment building. They'd been talking so much she hadn't even realized they were home. Home. The word felt so right. I'm home.

Maxie, you were...I don't wanna push information off on you. The doc said that it might only make the problem worse, and make you frustrated because you can't remember."

Max watched as again Alec ran a hand through his hair. He must do that whenever he's upset; he's been doing it a lot lately. "I want to know what happened to me...I mean, why I was there," she almost demanded, a determined set to her jaw. "They...they told me that it was because I let my CO's son get killed during a mission."

Alec's hands bunched into fists and he let out the urge to scream. He was pretty sure he knew who her "CO" was. "What was your CO's name?" he asked, just to make sure.

Max shuddered as she parked the bike and began walking up the stairs. "White."

"Dammit. That son-of-a-bitch!" he yelled. Max was taken aback by his sudden outburst, but after spending apparently two months - a lot of which she didn't even remember - she'd seen enough to know why White warranted such a negative reaction.

"I take it you don't like him that much either?" Max's voice was quiet and subdued at the memory of her captor.

"He...he fuckin' tricked you into turning yourself over to him." He wasn't sure if he should tell her that he was the leverage White had used to get to her. "He tricked you, then he took you away from m- us."

"But why? Why would they go to all that trouble for me? And what about his son?" Max couldn't believe what she was hearing; she'd known that something had been wrong with the whole situation, but it was still a bit much to take in.

"You're special, Max. You have something they want - something about your blood." He saw her wince at the last word and hurried on. "As for White's son...he is dead, but you didn't kill him. White's own people did that - you only tried to save him."

"Then, all the punishments were for nothing?" The torture, the starvation, the 'visits' - all for nothing. She vaguely noticed that she was shaking and Alec moved to put an arm around her in comfort. The memories of those late night visits from the two janitors were still fresh in her mind and she flinched.

A look of hurt flickered across Alec's face before his worry overtook it. "Max, don't worry. You're home now, even if you don't remember it. We're gonna get the people that did this to you, that I can promise you."

His words were reassuring and Max allowed a small smile to form on her lips. "I might not remember much, but I know that this is my home. I knew that even in that place." Brown eyes met hazel and she raised a hand hesitantly to the side of Alec's face. "I remembered those eyes. For a while, they were all I could remember and they helped me get through...what happened." Sharing the small fact lightened Max's mood and Alec could sense the change.

"Hey, you still up for some breakfast? We'll put your bike in the storage area with mine." Max pulled away awkwardly and nodded.

"Alright, I'm sure there are a lot of people who are dying to see you."

Max forced a smile even while her thoughts were morbid. Right, according to White, that's more true than you might know.

Raina stood looking out over Terminal City from a fourth story window in a building across the street. "Looks pretty quiet now, no sign of her," she told Brenam. She'd watched with hatred as 452 had walked with 494 across an open yard toward what looked like a mess hall.

"She's probably still in the mess hall. Got some catchin' up to do with all her freaks," one of the new additions to the team, Blaine, snorted. There were four new members in all - all of them almost as highly recommended as the original members.

Raina didn't even crack a smile. "See how far humour will get you, idiot." She turned to glare at Blaine over her shoulder. "You know where it got Dymen." Maybe that'll sober the bastard up. Sure, Dymen had been killed because he was a serious idiot, not a funny one, but to Raina, an idiot was still an idiot, no matter what the flavor.

"Would everyone just shut-up long enough to remember we have a very short time table here?" Brenam was tired of the constant bickering between the new members. If it'd been up to him, only he and Raina would be here. But in the end, White had been in charge, and he knew what would have happened if he'd argued the point. "We have to get her back to Amarillo tomorrow, or else all our preparation for the Coming was for nothing." Addressing the newer faces he said, "Do you want to be responsible for the greatest failure in our history?" The vigorous shaking of four heads answered him. "Right then. We move in bright and early tomorrow morning. Everyone get to their posts!"

Once everyone had exited the room except for Raina and Brenam, Brenam went to the window to stand beside the red-head. "Raina, do you think 494 will be a problem? He seems to never leave her alone."

"He won't be a problem with a bullet in his head," Raina stated cockily.

"Don't you think White would be pleased if we brought him both of the transgenics he loathes most?" He raised an eyebrow in question.

"You know, I think you're right. Get Blaine and Seti to keep an eye on 494. I want 452. That bitch broke my nose the first week she was there."

"Raina, it's not like it hurt," Brenam reminded her tauntingly.

"It's the principle of the thing."

Brenam only shook his head and went silently to his post. A glance at his watch told him it was 9:30 am. Only 19 hours to go.

To Be Continued