Chapter 6 If you knew what I felt.
That penthouse apartment is damn near impenetrable. I'll find a way to get to him. I'm clever. He has to leave it sometime. Or I have to find a way in. I wonder how those photos worked? Guess I'll find out tomorrow.
"You're kidding." Alec guffawed, tickled by Max's predicament. "You can't go anywhere because you're in heat?"
"Yes and stop laughing. It's not funny."
Alec laughed harder. "I can hear how hot and bothered you are over the phone Max. Hey is my voice turning you on? Did you ring me up because you wanted phone sex?"
"I want you dead. I'm just letting you know I'm out of action for the next three days."
Alec chuckled. "Is that so you can get some action?"
"Stop laughing you annoying bastard. Just tell Mole."
Max hung up the phone and turned to Original Cindy. "Zero sympathy from 494."
"Well Boo did you really expect it? He doesn't know what it's like for you. He'll be singing a different tune if it happens to Gem." Original Cindy consoled her friend.
Max squirmed on the sofa. "I feel like I'm going to explode, of all times for Logan to leave me!"
Original Cindy scrutinised her friend closely. "Well you can scratch the itch. Your boy Dalton has been sending you messages every twenty minutes for the past two hours."
Max's cell phone beeped again. Max flung it across the room.
"Tell him where you are Max. O.C. will leave the house." Original Cindy offered. "I don't want to hear you all going at it like alley cats."
"Not helping O.C." Max groaned. God the thought of being in bed with Dalton 'getting busy' as Joshua used to say, was too tempting. This morning had been unbelievable with Dalton. Max wanted sex with the twenty one year old male transgenic even more tonight.
O.C. walked over and picked up the phone. "Ring him girlfriend." She ordered.
Max answered the door half an hour later. Dalton had a bunch of flowers with him, which he threw promptly on the floor when he saw Max's sweating panting state.
The X5 and X6 fell on each other and sank against the wall, tearing at each others clothes.
O.C. came out into the living room. "Bedrooms on the left remember, Max." O.C. mentioned to her friend, putting on her coat. "Have fun Boo."
The apartment is proving a hard nut to crack but I think I've found a way. I am clever, so clever.
"You are amazing Max." Dalton said kissing her shoulder. They lay naked on the bed intertwined, temporarily satiated.
"So are you Dalton." Max purred. "It's pretty incredible how it feels with each other huh?"
"And you've never been with another X5?" Dalton asked. "I often wondered if you and Alec had ever?"
"God no, He reminds me too much of my brother Ben. I never could get it on with him," Max shuddered in distaste.
"But it was over a year before you and Logan found that virus cure, wasn't there someone in that gap?" Dalton persisted disbelievingly, stroking her hair. "You're so beautiful Max, I can't see you not having a lover in all that time."
Max sat up and gently pushed Dalton away. "Hey I was an ice queen. That's what I got told anyway."
Dalton sat up on one hand and stroked Max's naked back still exploring her body, "By whom?"
Max twisted lithely round and caught his hand, kissing it. "You really aren't going to let this go are you?"
"No, I want to know who my rival out there is." Dalton told her. His eyes had a feral glint to them, as he uttered that statement.
"Your rival's dead." Max said flatly. "He died five years ago, just before the T.C. siege. So don't worry you have no X series competition. I don't want to talk about it. Can we just screw again please?"
"I thought just now we had progressed to making love?" Dalton said hurt.
"You thought wrong." Max said callously. "You're just a fling Dalton. Get it in your head. I have every intention of getting back with Logan." She pushed Dalton back on the bed. "And I know you're not going to care after I've …"
Dalton surrendered and let her go down on him. He could wait. She'd crack eventually, both in loving him and telling him who the X5 was, who had obviously broken her heart.
I've thought of a good way to get her out of the house too. That way I'll have him by myself for a bit. I need to tell him how clever I've been, how stupid he has been and how I'm going to have her all to myself from now on. Only an hour to go before the breakfast ritual. I wonder how she is after the photos?
Gem poured Mole, Dix and Luke their morning coffees. "It's a grand day isn't it?" she smiled.
"I'm surprised to see you so cheerful." Mole said picking up a muffin.
"Why? asked Gem, preoccupied with mopping up some spilt milk. She was busier than normal because Dalton had called in, and asked her if he could take a personal day.
"Well someone said, you'd gone home sick yesterday." Mole wondered. "Wasn't that you Dix?"
"Catlady," Dix said, trying to decide between an apricot or apple pastry.
"No I'm fine." Gem laughed.
"Well when is Alec coming back to T.C.?" said Mole. "It isn't working, just doing things backwards and forwards over the internet. And now apparently, Max has got stomach flu too. I didn't think X5s got stomach flu."
"I had stomach flu yesterday." Gem lied. "Must be an X5 mutation but I'm fine now."
"Is that why Dalton isn't here this morning?" Luke asked Gem. "Stomach flu?"
"I guess." Gem lied again.
Dix shook his head. "Striking down X6s too huh?"
"We better notify Dr Carr." Mole said concerned. "Seems like an epidemic."
Oh come on, stomach flu? How thick does she think I am? She's so beautiful when she lies.
"I think it's over." Max said looking at her self in the bedroom mirror, two days later. "The flushing is gone."
"And you want me gone too?" Dalton's voice sounded upset. Max hardened her heart, it was for his own good. Renfro had been right about one thing Max was poison to everyone she touched, why ruin Daltons promising life?
"I told you you're just a fling, Logan's coming back and we'll get back together."
Dalton shook her impatiently. "Stop living in fantasy land 452! You ordinary husband has left you for good. You don't belong with an ordinary. Transgenics belong with transgenics."
Max took his hand off her shoulder. "I can see Alec schooled you well."
"Yeah he's right, look how happy he and Gem are together. Can you imagine him with that politician Asha Barlow? Don't be stupid, you have been happier with me in the last three days, than you ever were with Logan in the past seven years." Dalton insisted, grabbing her hands and forcing her to look at him in the eyes.
"It's for your own good!" Max emphasised, trying unsuccessfully to get her hands free.
"Who was the other X5, what happened with him?" Dalton demanded, he was damned if he was leaving without hearing the whole story. "Did you push him away too?"
"Yes and I got him killed!" stormed Max. "I'll get you killed or you'll leave me."
"You're probably carrying my child. I'd say I'm going to be in your life for some time to come." Dalton said calmly. "Yes hello Max, three days making love and no contraception while you were in heat. If that doesn't knock you up nothing will."
"I hoped…" Max looked ashamed. "I hoped I might be after this, maybe because you are an X6, it might work."
"Well won't the child get killed or leave you too?" Dalton questioned her logic. "If everyone else does, in your life? Well Honey I'm not leaving. I'm not going anywhere, till you tell me what happened six years ago."
"Let go of my hands." Max instructed him. Once released, she rubbed them. She had always wanted to tell one other person in the universe about what had happened that April six years ago. "Okay but you can never tell Alec or especially Gem, I told you this."
"My lips are sealed." Dalton promised her.
"When Alec and I were working at Jam Pony, he brought a friend in, Biggs. He was another X5 and Biggs liked me. But I was hung up on Logan. I think I was trying to prove something to myself for years. I could get a decent guy to love me. That I could be ordinary." Max left the bathroom and sat naked on her bed.
Dalton sat beside her and put his arm round her shoulders. "Go on." He encouraged her.
"I only knew Biggs for ten days." Max remembered. "Ten days. Biggs and I…. the last night of his life it turned out. We got drinking and one thing led to another. I wasn't drunk. You know how hard it is for us to get drunk. Anyway we went to bed together and it was … good, almost as good as with you."
Max turned to Dalton with tears in her eyes. "The next morning he wanted to tell Alec, we were a couple and I couldn't. I was pretending to Logan… If you knew how I felt Dalton, I was pretending I was going out with Alec but he didn't know. It just all seemed too overpowering, partly because the night I had just spent with Biggs, had been the most amazing love making I had ever experienced and I didn't want a transgenic partner in my life. I hadn't accepted it about myself.." Max paused. "Can I get dressed?"
Dalton and Max both got dressed in silence. Max went into the kitchen to get a drink of water and Dalton followed her.
"So Biggs got mad at me, like you got. He told me he was having breakfast with Alec and I was a fool, an Ice Queen. When I came to my senses he'd be waiting because I couldn't ignore physical attraction like we had. And he got killed that day, he got lynched and if I had made him stay in bed with me like we both wanted. If I had rung him up during the day and told him yes, I was giving us a fucking chance he would have come back to Terminal City and he'd be alive."
"I have a lot to say about this." Dalton considered. "But why don't you want me to tell Alec and Gem?"
"Because of what happened afterwards." Max put her water down and hugged herself. "We walked back from seeing the body, I started to cry, I told Alec it was all my fault ... why it was all my fault. And Alec said yes it was my fault, for causing Manticore to burn down, for lying to Logan, lying to Biggs, lying to him, crap about us being breeding partners and then he kissed me, tried to force himself on me, to rape me.'
"Alec?" Dalton said disbelievingly shaking his head. Dalton's hero for the past six years a rapist? "I don't believe it."
"I look like my clone obviously," Explained Max, "Alec was in love with Sam. Alec had real psychological problems when he came out of Manticore. Everyone did but the 09 clones more than most. I think he almost snapped that night. But he didn't rape me Dalton". Max reassured a stricken looking Dalton.
"It was ugly." Max shut her eyes in memory of the horrible night. "Alec stopped himself, when I begged him not to. He had overpowered me completely. I always stupidly thought I could whip his ass.. .He ended up crying in my arms. I went back to Terminal City and made Alec bring in guns. I'd resisted doing it till then. We've never mentioned it again to each other. You are the first person I've ever told the whole sordid story to." She grabbed a tissue and blew her nose. "It is an actual relief to get it off my chest."
Right if this plan doesn't work, nothing will. She'll be out of the house and I'll go to their apartment, pretend I have a document to sign. He's so cocky he'd never suspect me, he hasn't yet after all. Then I'll stab him in the back. Ironic that, I like it. That should take long enough for him to die and me to tell him why I did it. Then I'll wipe the security tapes. Easy too easy. It's why I didn't want to do it before. I'm too clever for this scheme really.
The phone rang in Max's apartment. Gem answered it. "Oh hi Catlady. We've been what? I'll be there right away. Yeah it's terrible."
"What's wrong?" Alec asked concerned.
"Oh, we've been robbed and vandalised at the café. I'll have to go check out the damage." Gem said grabbing her car keys. "All we need huh?"
Gem ran down to her car and got in. She was halfway to Terminal City, when Gem realised she had left her cell phone behind. Crap, she needed to be in contact with Alec at all times. The shop wasn't going to un-vandalise itself if she got there in record time.
Gem turned round and drove back to her apartment. She stood in the elevator looking at her reflection in the stainless steel, was that a pimple? Surely not?
Gem dashed out and ran to the front door unlocking it, she walked over the thresh hold and in to her own little hell.
Alec was lying on the floor bleeding from a back wound and a contusion on his head. He looked like he had put up a hell of a fight. He also looked mortally wounded.
Gem looked at the transgenic who had caused this. He was standing over Alec, looking dismayed at her unexpected re-appearance in the Cale apartment.
"Oh my god!" Gem exclaimed, in total rejection of the scene before her. "It's you!"
AN: heh heh can you guess? Come on take a shot. Gem's dirty secret revealed next chapter. Next chapter, last chapter.