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He's at his computer when she slips down the rope and lands in his living room. She can hear the clicking of the keys as he types, and the only light in the apartment comes from the screen. She turns around and walks soundlessly into the kitchen. She grabs two glasses from the cupboard and pulls a bottle of wine from the fridge.
She drops the tablets into one of the glasses, and then pours the wine in. "Are you planning on joining me?" she calls.
Logan appears at the edge of the kitchen, smiling wryly. "Help yourself," he says.
She grins at him before turning away. "I think we need to talk, make up a game plan or something. I don't want you to get hurt, Logan."
Logan takes the glass she hands him, and twirls it between his fingers, not meeting her eyes. "I can't give you want you want," he tells her.
You can, she thinks. Just drink.
She comes to stand beside him, watching carefully as he raises the glass. He tilts his head back, drinking it all in one shot. She feels sick as she watches, but tells herself it won't hurt him. Only Eyes Only, that's all.
"You don't have to," she whispers. "You don't have to do anything at all, but I will see him dead." She reaches out but pulls back before she can touch him. "You shouldn't have to die for his cause."
"It's my cause," he says, but she doesn't get it, and it's too late anyway.
She sets her glass off to the side, without drinking it, and turns away again. Her heart is beating faster than it's supposed to, and she doesn't know what's wrong. It's not a betrayal, really, she's just doing her job and Logan won't be hurt.
She hears him sigh but still doesn't face him. "God," he whispers. "Is it hot in here?"
All he has to do is touch Eyes Only and it's over, all of it. Manticore will be safe, Logan will be safe, the hacks will stop. She'll move on, find another mission, and forget all about this. "Do you ever meet with Eyes Only personally?" she asks.
"Do I--?"
He sounds out of breath and Max spins around in concern. He's leaning back against the counter, and a moment later the wine glass slips from his fingers, crashing to pieces on the white tile floor.
Max's eyes dilate as she focuses in on him, noticing the symptoms with a heavy heart. She wonders for a moment if the virus was defective, if it infected whoever it came into contact with and not only the DNA it had been specified for, but looking at his eyes, she knows better. Those eyes are familiar and she doesn't know how she missed it before.
"You bastard," she whispers, but her voice is shaking and scared, not angry at all. "You're Eyes Only."
His eyes focus on her and he stumbles, slipping to the ground. He leans back against the counter, hands on the floor holding himself up and then he looks up. "What did you give me?"
"Nothing," she says. "It was for Eyes Only, not for you."
He laughs, and she watches in morbid fascination as all of the color bleeds from his skin. She doesn't know how long it takes for the virus to kill, she doesn't even know if it has a cure. She drops to her knees beside him, horror struck and she can hear Lydecker in the back of her mind, whispering that it's a job well done.
"I didn't know," she says, tears in her eyes. "Logan, I swear I didn't know."
He bites his lip and shuts his eyes, starting to shake. "Well," he says weakly. "It is a secret identity, so that's kind of the point."
"You can't die," she says, blinking the tears away and letting determination take its place. "We'll take you to Manticore, they'll cure you, and if you tell them what they want to know I'm sure you could strike a deal--"
Logan shook his head. "I'm better off dying here, and I don't plan to make any deals."
Max felt as though everything she had ever stood for was slipping away, becoming blurred, and she can't remember why she ever listened to Lydecker, how she let herself become what she was--she's been killing people like Logan all her life, so how is it that it's only hitting her now?
"Then I'll go to Manticore," she says roughly. "I'll get you a cure." If there was one, that was, but Manticore usually accounts for everything, so she's thinking there is.
"Don't," Logan tells her weakly, and she's terrified he might be right. "Just get away, Max, and promise me you'll stop working for them, you could help people . . ."
"Help people?" Max asks disbelievingly. "Would you believe I was trying to help you? I can't help people, I only kill them."
Logan is slipping away, she can tell, but she's not going to let him die. There's only one person she wants to help. "Okay," she says, getting to her feet. "I promise, I'll stop working for them, Logan, I promise you--I'm going to help you."
"There is no cure."
Max looks up in shock, and sees Zack in shadow, standing beside the couch.
"It was meant to be a rather final arrangement."
"Did you know--" she starts, and her voice is as filled with as much anger as she's ever had.
Zack took a few more steps, coming into the light, and she could see him shaking his head. "No, but this is simpler, don't you think?"
She loves her brother, and in other circumstances would exchange her life for his without a thought, but at the moment she thinks she could kill him and not regret it. It isn't fair, she knows, because two days ago that could have been her standing there, wearing a mocking grin as she watched someone die.
Logan is unconscious, but he's still breathing. "No," she says. "There's nothing simple about this. There has to be something we can do."
"We?" Zack laughs. "This is your problem, Max, I'm glad to be finished with this whole thing. Eyes Only is a complication we don't need."
"Haven't you ever had second thoughts about any of this?" Max pleads. "Haven't you ever once thought that maybe what we do is wrong?"
Zack stares down at her, unmoved. "Not that I recall," he tells her carelessly. "We should leave, Max. This building has good security, and we hardly need to be caught standing over a dead body."
"He's not dead yet," Max snaps.
Zack opens his mouth to respond but there's a crash and he pauses, frozen, before his eyes roll up in his head and he drops to the floor. Max watches in disbelief as a young man is revealed behind him, holding a bloody statue of a cat in his hands. "Good for you he's not," the man says, dropping the statue and pulling out a gun to aim in her direction, "as I've become rather fond of the do-gooder."
Ben is her first thought, but this man's eyes are saner, and Ben's been dead for years--put down by Manticore when it was found he couldn't be controlled. This was 494, then, also known as Alec. Short for Smart Alec, if she's remembering right, and lovingly named by none other than her own twin.
"What did you give him?" he demands, and she shakes her head, not sure.
"I don't know. It was created specifically for Eyes Only, Zack says there no cure." She watches Alec warily, the gun still pointed unfailingly at her heart. She almost wishes he would just shoot her, perhaps the world would be better off.
"When was the last time you had your immunity shots updated?" Alec asks her.
"A couple weeks ago, why?" Max turns away from Alec when Logan moans, falling sideways to curl on the floor.
"Good," Alec says. "Are you serious about wanting to save him?"
Max nods, grabbing Logan's hand. Her life is in it, she realizes, but doesn't know why. She has the oddest feeling that Logan was her second chance at living, to make up for that time she hadn't escaped, and foolishly she had let rules and orders get in the way. She may have lost it forever.
"Don't go anywhere," Alec says, and disappears. He returns five minutes later, and though he's not out of breath he's gone far, she can tell. He kneels beside her and grabs her arm, jamming a needle in without hesitation. She winces, but is more curious than scared.
"What are you doing?" she asks.
"You're going to give him a transfusion," Alec tells her, lifting Logan's arm to stick the needle in, more gently for him, she notices. "It's worked once before, and you'd better hope it works again--if not, I may have to just kill you."
She glanced down at the tubing, watching the blood slip to fill it and move swiftly down, heading towards Logan's vein. If he dies, she thinks, she might just welcome Alec's retribution--deserving as she was.