Playing girl detective

Alec, Gem and Max reread the disc entries, again and again. Trying to get a clue as to who it could possibly be, that was writing their insane journal entries.

"I don't think he's an X5." Alec said finally. "Even though he says here, male X5s came across as rapists. Just the kind of publicity we needed."

"An X6 then, how else does he know how all the ins and outs of Oak Street and how we sound like making love?" Gem suggested.

"Aren't you glad we moved?" Alec told Gem in a told you so voice.

"Yeah but even I heard you with Alec occasionally, when I went to visit any one in Oak street." Max said uncomfortably. "You are kinda noisy Gem and the walls are thin."

"Okay I'm glad we moved." Gem said to Alec cheeks flaming. "God poor Dalton." She said putting her face in her hands "Putting up with us for four years."

"You mostly did it at my apartment any way hon." Alec said reassuringly. "Anyway all female X5s are screamers it's not just you."

"Alright moving along people" Max said uncomfortably her face going red as well with embarrassment. "We know it's a male because of the sensitive I'd give her a fuck if she wanted but that stuck up X5 bitch wouldn't look at me. I bet I could impregnate her entry."

"Yeah I think it's a freak. You'd look twice at an X6 they're a hot bunch of males." Gem laughed.

"I wouldn't know." Max said stiffly "I was only looking at Logan."

"Liar, Teased Alec "Every chick checks out that X6 Fenn who has a job as a bodyguard to the Mayor."

"Leave me alone," Snapped Max, flushing red again.

"Okay" apologised Alec. "Well can you go all Nancy Drew? Ask around the X6s? Seeing you're so immune to their charms. I'm going to tackle the freaks. Although who do you start with? Everyone hangs out at your cafe Gem. Should I start with Mole one of our best friends? Dix, Luke ..."

"You're not leaving my sight Alec." Gem said angrily. "This maniac's not going to try and kill you if I'm beside you."

"That's true." said Max to Alec. "You guys stay here. There's state of the art security camera's and alarms installed. We made it Breeding Cult proof so it should fend off one psycho transgenic."

"What about you?" Gem said worriedly, to Max.

"I have my runes/she has her runes." Max and Alec said simultaneously. Alec would always be callous about Max's safety he had complete confidence in her ability to look after herself.

I wonder who found my little hide away. Well they and that bitch Max will know by now, whoever found it. Nothing is private in this damn place. And I'll be on my guard for when Max comes round.

Max decided to start with the X6 closest to Gem, Dalton. Because even though Alec and Gem weren't suspicious of him, Max was. Dalton had been making Max feel uncomfortable for the past two years, and she couldn't work out why. Max had learned to trust her instincts over these past five years.

She was starting to stay awake longer again, her shark DNA reasserting itself but still no seizures thankfully. Max left Gem and Alec in her apartment and went back to Terminal City.

Dalton was in the middle of baking muffins for the café the next day, when she knocked. He unlocked the cafe door and looked at her coldly. "Hi Max what can I do for you?"

"I wanted to ask you some questions about the attempts on Alec's life." Max said looking at her wrist, nothing so far.

"What are you a cop now, as well as our glorious leader?" asked Dalton. He stirred his muffin mix, and poured it carefully into the baking pans.

"I thought Alec was your friend." said Max raising her eyebrows.

"He is, Alec's been great to me since the day I met him, at the fuck up in Jam Pony." Dalton said putting the trays in the oven and setting the timer. "But I don't see how talking to you, when I've got to study for a test tomorrow helps Alec."

"You're an X6, you don't need to study." Max said determinedly. "Why are you trying to get rid of me?"

"Um because I think you're a killjoy bitch." Dalton said wiping down the bench top. "You have been the killjoy bane of us X6s, for the past five years. No drugs, no sex, till we turned eighteen. Like you an 09er weren't doing all that, when you were a teenager.'

"I was trying to protect you all" Said Max woozily. She felt light headed and funny. God Dalton must be the killer. She checked her wrist still no rune.

"Yeah right" Dalton scoffed. He got out a new mixing bowl and started making a chocolate cake.

"I suppose you think I'm a stuck up bitch." Max prodded, standing close to him.

"What? Yeah I suppose so." Dalton said heatedly. "I've been legally an adult the past three years, and you still treat me like the fifteen year old kid you first met, six years ago. Like you X5s think you're so superior to us X6s, because we're more biddable. Well that was Manticore's stupid theory. It's not true, we are just less likely to go insane than you X5s."

Dalton put the cake in the fan oven. "I'm voting for Fenn this election, he's running against you."

Max went over and stood behind the counter with him. "It's a democracy here."

Dalton started to stack the dishwasher having to lift it first to get a dropped teaspoon. "So you say Max." he smiled nastily.

"What are you so angry about?" Max asked noticing how strong Dalton was, he could overpower her easily in a fight, maybe that was why he made her uneasy. "Is it because Gem moved out and left you?"

"Fuck you're another insane X5. Why I would be angry about that? I have my own set of rooms now. Gem should have moved out with Alec, two years ago. I ended up sleeping at Alec's just to get some sleep. Do you know how loud Gem is when she has sex?" Dalton said turning the dishwasher on.

"And you were jealous." Max said triumphantly.

'Um no. Apart from the fact they were getting some, and I wasn't because of your stupid rules." Dalton began peeling hard boiled eggs, from a pot cooling on the stove. "Gem is like the big sister I never had. She was my friend even back in Manticore, we both did kitchen duty together a lot."

"But you think I'm a stuck up bitch? Max repeated, still feeling slightly hurt about that, even though it was a lunatic's opinion.

"You're putting words into my mouth." Dalton said, exasperated with her strange questions, putting the eggs into a slicer.

"And you want to impregnate me?" Max pushed.

"You want me to be a sperm donor?" Dalton said baffled. "Look I know you and Logan are genetically incompatible Max, and I'm sorry."

"How do you know that?" Max asked swiftly, putting her hands in the pockets of her suede coat.

"Everyone knows that. You know how we transgenics gossip. Poor old Joshua could never keep his mouth shut." Dalton shook his head in sad memory.

"I'm not asking you to be a sperm donor." Max said crossly. Great, everyone in T.C. knew about her and Logan's private pain.

"Well why do I feel you're coming onto me Max?" Dalton inquired of her. "Look how close you're standing to me."

Max looked at him her cheeks on fire and tiny beads of sweat on her forehead. Dalton put the eggs down on the counter with a jarring bang, turned round and pulled her hard her in his arms.

'He's got so tall.' Max mused as Dalton lowered his mouth on hers firmly, and kissed her. Dalton kissed her mouth again and again until she parted her lips to allow his tongue entry. They stood kissing slowly for a long time until Max felt every part of her being, burn with desire.

"I want you." Dalton breathed in her ear, as he put his hand up her turtleneck and pushed her on the flat of her back, so she was crushed against him.

"I want you too." Max moaned as he kissed and sucked on her neck because like a lightbulb going off in her head, she realised what had happened. The heat cycle Manticore had 'fixed' had come back, six and a half years later. max tried to struggle away half heartedly but Dalton picked her up roughly and put her on the café counter. He pulled her sweater off and started to pay earnest attention to her breasts.

Max moaned as she felt him tug off her jeans and panties and part her thighs with his knee. She was breathing too hard to be coherent enough to help him remove his own clothing. Max heard his zipper being undone and knew there was no turning back.

Still no knock on my door. I wonder what she thought of my little entry about knowing what her mate and Max had got up to. Is a seed of doubt planted in her mind? There should be.

Dalton looked at Max as they lay on the café counter half undressed and panting.

"What the fuck is going on here with us?" he asked her "Not that it hasn't been great mind you. I can see my letter to Playboy now Dear Editor I always thought the stories in your magazine were made up, until one night working in my big sister's café..."

"I thought you might be trying to kill Alec." Max said stiffly sitting up and rearranging her garments. "I can see I was wrong and I just had sex with you like that because I go into heat sometimes like a cat, and you obviously still have enough panther DNA in you to respond to it. It's a Manticore FUBAR."

"Of course dear old Manticore. I was wondering why the best screw of my life was happening with you of all people." Dalton said adjusting his own clothing. "Damn I'm going to have to redo those eggs, shit." He squatted on the floor and began to clear up his spilt sliced eggs. "So is that it?"

"Pardon?" said Max five years of living with Logan had definitely influenced her vocabulary from the LA gangster patois she use to converse in.

"Well are you just going to walk out that door, and pretend this never happened?" Dalton asked her.

"Yeah, I did used to find this the best option." Said Max simply. "Watch me leave."

Dalton blurred to the exit and held the door shut. "No way Max that was frickin' amazing just then, you can't just ignore chemistry like that."

"I do." Max said bitterly thinking back to an incident in her past. If she had made a different choice, would she be as happy as Gem now?

"You've separated from Cale right?" Dalton confirmed "Well I'm breaking up with my girlfriend Diana, at lunch time and then I'm seeing you tonight you understand?"

"Okay, but I'm not sleeping with you again." Max could hear herself lie.

"Of course you're not." An amused disbelieving Dalton kissed her goodbye on the mouth and Max was embarrassed to find herself sinking into his arms again. Her lips parting under his assault and her treacherous body responding with an increasing pounding heart rate. She pushed herself away and walked to the door.

To her irritation she saw the twenty-one year old X6, was smirking at her. Alec had had far too much influence on Dalton's development, Max decided.

"Hope you find out who's trying to kill Alec." Dalton told her, smoothing her hair back affectionately. He had always lusted after her this was a wet dream come true as far as he was concerned.

"Aren't you going to tell me to be careful?" Max asked him, as she opened the door to leave.

"Why? I just assumed you would be." Dalton told her, as he locked up behind her.

Because I know what I saw that night in the street and I have the photos of the nights after that and if she knew as well, she might not be so happy with the time her mate and our glorious leader spend together.

Alex came in from his shower, to find Gem rereading the journal entries.

Alec sat beside her and took her hand. "It all happened before you and it wasn't even that much."

"What was it Alec? What did you and Max do?" Gem asked calmly.

"Okay. I had a friend Biggs from my unit." Alec told her admiring her open mindedness, he knew she trusted him utterly. "He was my best friend at Manticore." Alec closed his eyes at the memory it still hurt it always would, just like CeCe, Rachel and now Josh.

"He got lynched and I got upset. I blamed Max. I said stupid things about being assigned breeding partners back at Manticrap. I kissed her and tried to have sex with her that night, after we were walking back from seeing his body. She said I wasn't a rapist at Manticore and I wasn't a rapist now. I cried on her shoulder like a baby and then we went back to Terminal City. I went back with Joshua and bashed up the ordinaries who did it, great closure."

"Yeah I know about that." Gem said to him laying her head against his neck comfortingly.

"You do?" Alec said astonished pushing her away so he could see her face.

"Max told me about it, when I refused to go out with you. When you first asked me out. She said I could always trust you about not forcing a female." Gem told him. "The photos?"

"I don't know what this stalker is talking about honestly, that's the closest me and Max ever came to having sex, just that one time." Alec said relieved that Gem finally knew most of the truth and ashamed of his past actions. "It got pretty ugly."

"But you stopped." Gem said reassuringly.

"Yeah," Said Alec gabbling on, almost making a clean breast of everything. "I did have the hots for Max for a while, because I had this hopeless adolescent unrequited love thing for her clone Sam. But seriously there's nothing between Max and me now apart from friendship, and I love you Gem."

"Yeah I know," replied Gem calmly, getting out her cell phone. "I'm texting Max to see that she's okay. She should have called back by now."

I think the best thing to do after having seen that little display in the café is to inform dear big brother Zack. I'm sure he'll want to wish his little sister every happiness. I never dreamed Max was such a slut. Max has barely had a conversation with Dalton the past five years, separated from her husband for five minutes and then she's jumping an X6?

I'm glad I have a camera installed there to see all the good stuff. I used to like seeing her in the morning, getting everything ready. Sometimes she'd change her clothes thinking she was all alone. She was of cours,e only I could see everything because I'm clever.