Max was struggling with her decision: If she looked at the situation in a logical way her interactions with Ames weren't making no sense at all. Why?

Well reason number one, she was a transgenic.

Reason number two, he was a familiar.

Reason number three, his kind wanted her kind dead or experimented upon.

Reason number four...well there really was no need for another reason. Those reasons should have been enough for her to walk away.

Even so the reasons didn't match the facts:

Fact number one, she liked interacting with White;

Fact number two, Ames was the one who got her the antidote for the zycinor;

Fact number three, she was taking care of his kid.

Her dilemma was going to have to wait because she heard little feet running up the stairs. She had asked Joshua earlier that day to pick him up after training.

"Max! The man is hungry!" Ray called as soon as he crossed the threshold.

She smiled as she heard his new catch phrase. He was spending way too much time with Alec and Biggs, she thought. She tried not to show him how amused she was at his antics and wiped the humor from her face.

"You're not getting anything until you've washed your hands." she informed the little man.

"Come on Max!" he had stopped a few paces in the room, facing her, hands on his hips "What's a few germs between us?"

"You are definitely not spending another minute with Alec or Biggs."

Ray smiled, he knew an empty threat when he heard one. His new guardian smiled back and shook her head.

"Go on little man, I said nothing until those hands are squeaky clean! And say thank you to Joshua."

"Thank you Joshua! Bye Joshua!" he hollered as he went into the bathroom.

"Bye mini fella!" Max let Joshua's gravelly voice soothe her worries. She missed spending time with the anomaly.

"Thanks for watching him." she hugged the big transgenic.

"No problem." he said returning the hug. It was good to see Max this happy again.

"You sure you don't want to eat with us?" she inquired. "I promise I didn't cook."

"Have plans." he gruffed out.

"Okay. But can you come back later?" she insisted.

"Alec or Biggs occupied?" Joshua asked. Usually the little boy was around those two. He had been surprised – in a good way – when Max had asked him to bring Ray back once he was finished with his training today.

"I'm trying to shield him for further damage." his friend said with humor. "He's starting to talk and to act like them."

Joshua let out a deep laugh. He too had noticed the same thing.

"You'd be a life saver Josh. So what do you say?"

"Of course little fella!"


She hadn't told Joshua why she needed him to take care of Ray that night. She didn't tell Alec either. What she told him was that she had a job that could bring some cash for them. Like any other resident she was pulling her weight around Transgenic Central; and Alec wasn't going to argue about getting more funds because they were low on supplies. She had all night. She just needed to make a little detour on her way back from White.

As she doubled back to make sure no one was following her, she noticed two burly guys one building away from White's. The neighbourhood was a quiet one and there were no banks or museums to case around, no casino's either. The presence of the two men stood out like a sore thumb for her. They weren't even discreet : either they thought they didn't need it, or they were stupid.

Once she broke into his apartment she went to the windows and watched the men. As she suspected they were staking out Ames' digs. She knew they weren't feds, so that could only mean that the Conclave was watching him.

She focused on her hearing and found two wiretaps around the house: one on his land phone and another behind a lamp in his bedroom. She looked for cameras or any other surveillance devices but didn't find any. Being around White was soon going to be very dangerous for her : at this point if given the choice, he would probably choose the Conclave over her.

She settled on a chair as she waited for him to come home. She had taken her decision to come here, she was going to stick to it. Either way, her scent was already all over the place, so she might as well stay, she reasoned.

She hadn't come to negotiate Ray's return to his father. She wasn't ready to let the little boy go. However he had given her a wonderful gift in the antidote, and she was just returning the favor. She didn't want to give back his son just yet, but she could help him find his father.

The antidote had thrown their relationship in a twist. They were on shaky grounds, trying to find again their footing and a sense of balance between them. The teasing through Otto continued, but they didn't go farther than that. They couldn't go farther than that. The teasing part was easy enough, it was the gestures like the antidote that was hard for both of them.

When she heard the key turning in the lock, she tiptoed and got behind the door.


Ames had noticed the car following him this morning and the other one parked outside his building with the little familiar rats. Those would sell their mothers to get into the Conclave's grace. He figured that he was only a matter of time before he was under surveillance. He'd had to check his apartment for unwanted devices tonight.

But when he opened his door, something else bothered him. A smell that was engraved his mind forever.

"Did you know that you had eyes on you?"

He felt her warm breath on his neck.

"Don't worry we can talk. I turned their little wires off." she added.

He pushed her against the wall and she let him. Their skin were separated by their clothes but she felt every inch of him on her body. The warmth, the strength of him enclosing her, swathing her, their feelings heightened by the darkness surrounding them. Something unfurled in her stomach and spread in all her body, from her head to her curling toes. She almost moaned her pleasure but she managed to keep quiet.

"Andrea called." she croaked as he breathed him her smell. "He wants to meet me, in Baltimore."

She felt like she was on fire, yet, the only part of him that was touching her were his hands, encasing her wrists. If only he would move his hands down she longed.

"If you want to go, I left you a ticket and the flight details on your bedside table. The plane leaves at 0600."

She pushed him away. He flicked the lights on but she had left him with nothing more than her scent and his raging hard-on.


Whether he was going or not was not an issue. Because of course he'd go. He called in sick to work and got rid off the little rats on his tail on his way to the airport. She had promised him a meeting with his father, and hell be damned he was going to get that meeting. He had decades of resentment, hatred and anger to get off his chest : there was no way he was missing this trip.

He didn't really think about it, but she had given him a seat in coach. As he sat down, with an obese man sweating on his right, and an old lady smelling of naphthalene on his left, he heard:

"Right this way Mrs White."

He twisted his head at the name, and there she was, a smirk in her eyes, dressed like a socialite, following the stewardess to the business section. She winked before disappearing behind the curtain.

The sight of her in a skirt was enough to distract him from his anger.


However it wasn't enough to distract him from his thoughts during the six hour flight. He realised that he was going to see his sire again. He grasped also the fact that Sandeman – he refused to call him father – was still alive, really alive.

What if the old man had been right all along? What if she really was what the runes described her to be. The meek would really have a shot at jeopardising the Conclave's plan. But was she strong enough for that? Could she really manage that on her own, with only her little transgenic army as a back up and without any other outside help?

His kind had been gearing up for their advent for thousand of years. She didn't even have one year to get ready.


Andrea was waiting for them at the airport and she didn't hide her displeasure at seeing him. Nonetheless, she gave him a slight nod.

"He's waiting for you." she informed Max "I didn't realize that you were bringing some luggage."

Obviously, he was the luggage but he didn't give a shit whether Andera liked him or not. He was more interested in the swaying hips of the transgenic walking before him. His hard-on was back.


There was no escaping the pulse. Baltimore was just as much in disarray as Seattle, Max thought as they negotiate their way toward the South Sector of Baltimore. Rumor was that New York was worse. She had never set foot in the big apple so she couldn't confirm. However, there was the same feel here in Baltimore and in Seattle.

"We'll be there soon." Andrea said in the silence.

Only a few minutes, now she thought, and I'll meet my maker. What were the protocole for that kind of situation she pondered. She looked at Ames and wasn't surprised to see him tense and edgy, his jaw clenched. He too was meeting his maker. She wondered again at the wisdom of inviting White to this reunion.

She felt the car slowing down and looked around her. The neighbourhood was slightly better than those they witnessed on the way. She immediately noticed the security detail and the cameras all over the place. This was a big operation for Andrea's rebels.


Nothing prepared Max to meet her maker. She had been trained to withstand torture, to hold her breath ten minutes under water, to get by without water or food ten days, but this one thing was really...weird. She never thought that she would meet her maker someday. All she ever saw of Manticore were the trainers, Lydecker and the other transgenics, like her.

Two years ago, her only trouble was to stay off Lydecker's radar. Now she knew, who created her and for what purpose. It didn't make things right that he was trying to save human kind.

Finding out that she had a role to play in human history didn't make her happy. She felt like she was back in Manticore, a mere pawn on a chess game where she couldn't chose where to go or what to do.

She translated those feelings by a solid punch in Sandeman's face as Andrea was introducing her.


"Why did you do that?" Andrea screeched out as she went to the old man and tried to help him with his broken nose.

"Stop fussing Andrea." ordered the injuried man as he re-set the bone of his nose. He picked a hanky and cleaned himself as much as he could.

"He deserved that, and more." the transgenic commented.

Andrea was full of indignation.

"If I had known this was the way you were going to react, I wouldn't have bothered calling you." she threw back at Max.

"Then you would have been wrong." the tone of Sandeman indicated that he wanted to change the subject. Andrea complied.

"What were you thinking?" continued Max. "No! Don't tell me, I don't want to know!"

And to think that she had been worried about Ames' reaction. She was the one going completely balllistic. She still wanted to hit something so she picked up something and threw it agaisnt the wall. It felt good but it still wasn't enough, so she picked something else and threw it to.

When she finally stopped the room was wrecked and she was silently crying.


Sandeman and Andrea had left them in the room alone but he could still hear them arguing through the door.

"This was a bad idea." repeated the rebel.

"It needed to be done. I was going to meet her one way or another." his father's matter of fact attitude was still embeded in him. You either did things his way, or you regretted it. The Conclave learned that the hard way. His sire had eluded capture for decades now and had even managed to create Manticore under the nose of the Conclave.

He'd thought that he was going to be the one hurting his sire, but then again, the day was still young.

"We need to move you. We stayed to long someone's going to find out. Hell maybe, he already called it in."

The he she mentionned with such distate was probably him, Ames mused. Well she wasn't his favorite person either.

"I don't think he did. We're staying and we'll take the time to sort this out."

"But sir..."

"No buts. That was an order."

He could practically she her nod at his sharp tone and smiled.

"I'll have rooms ready for them."

He heard her footsteps fading away, and turned his gaze back on Max.


The satisfying crunch of broken bones had pleased Max and as she worked out her anger on her furnitures, she calmed down gradually.

He didn't look like anything she imagined though she had never wondered what would her maker would look like.

She heard him step into the room again.

"I have this dream about a man with a cane. He tells me that I'm special."

The old familiar nodded.

"That wasn't a dream. It was me."

"Why me?" it was almost a wail. "Why did you create us? Did you think that we wouldn't feel anything?"

When he didn't answer, she rose from her seat and advanced on him.

"I came here for answers, and you're going to give them to me!"

"It was an accident, the geneticist were supposed to turn off the part of your brain that responded to emotions. When they managed later on, the results were..." he hesitated. "aberrations. It was a total failure, so we keep the DNA splicing for the X, and the nomaly as you like to call them."

"I'm an accident!" she snorted. "Figures!"

"I did the best I could with what I had, and the little time that I had." he justified. "The Advent is coming and you are far from ready!"

"Don't you dare patronize me!" she yelled back at him.

"Well you wanted the truth young lady! If you wanted to remain in blissfull ignorance you should have stayed in Seattle! We gave you designations because we had to de-humanize you! Lydecker encouraged us that way, because that way we were going to be able to control you, he said!" Sandeman laughed, a mad laugh. "Control you! The whole thing was a fiasco!" he poured scotch into a glass and continued. "After your escape in '09, I thought that there was now way that I could make another you. So I left."

Once again she was struck with the thought that he didn't look like a mad scientist, or a former member of a wacko cult. He looked like what she imagined a grandfather would look like: greying hair, almost white; a kind and gentle face; a soft and deep voice made for telling stories. She saw Ames' eyes reflected in the old man's own. She noticed the calluses on his hands and deduced that he liked to build things. Nothing in his demeanor would have made her suspect the strength she easily picked in Ames. And yet, a word, a tone of his voice was enough to clear a room and send Andrea scurrying.

She wasn't ready for this talk. She grabbed her leather jacket and exited the room leaving the father and son to their reunion. She wasn't ready to know what else he had in store for her.


The old man shook his head at the wreckage that was now his office. When Andrea had told him that 452 was coming to see him, he didn't think that she would bring his son with her. Their relationship was unexpected to say the least.

He sighed. His life was full of regrets. The way he'd handled Ames was one of those regrets. He should have taken the boy with him, but he didn't want his son to live on the run, always looking over his shoulder, afraid of shadows. As it was the tough lov ehe got dealt with as a child had made him stronger. He could never say those word to his son, he could never say that he was proud. Ames would never let him and his heart bled for his son's love and for all the struggles he was surely going to face if he persisted in the path that was in.

"You're going to stay there, and say nothing?" inquired Sandeman when he had enough of the silence. "I'm sure that there are lots of things that you want to tell me."

"I think she pretty much covered what I think of you and what I want to say to you with that punch to your face."

"Only natural that you'd think that way son."

In a second, he had his father pinned to the wall.

"Don't you dare call me son! I am not your son! You lost that right when you left me..." he stopped, clenched his jaw and threw his sire on the wall with all his strength. "I'm not your son!"

Ames took a deep breath.

"This! THIS is all your fault! All this situation! Why did you need to create them!" White yelled angrily.

"I had to do it." was the only explanation that he got from his father that night.

Andrea came into the room, saw his father sprawled on the floor and said that his room was ready and that someone named David was waiting outside to show him the room.


Neither of them managed to find sleep that night. Even if she hadn't come to meet Sandeman today, Max would have probably spent sometime in her high place before hitting Crash or something. With her DNA she scarcely needed to sleep.

But here, in Baltimore, she didn't know what to do. She didn't have her baby with her to unwind and she didn't know any high spot that she could climb. She had also gathered that although she was treated as a guest, she was definetely on house arrest: she wasn't going out without knocking a coiuple of guys' unconscious and she didn't want to bother.

So she settled for the next best thing:a glass of milk.

Apparently, someone else had the same idea.


When he had decided to accompany Max here, he thought that confronting his father would make things better. It didn't. Ames was too wired to sleep. Thousands of thoughts were going through his head. He could lay still in bed, waiting for sleep to come.

So he got up and followed the noise in the kitchen.

He had resolved to call her 452 again. He'd just had to live with those unresolved feelings he had for her because after this trip, he had to really think about his future. And after his reunion with his sire, he had chosen his side: the Conclave's. His father should have been stopped years ago. He wasn't surprised to discover her in the kitchen, after all, she was already occupying his mind, and his dreams.

He took the stool next to her in silence. Neither of them bothered by the unlit kitchen.

Ames finally said to Max : "Not quite what you were hoping for right?"

"I don't know that I was expecting something." she paused a second before adding "I guess I was hoping for some kind of remorse from him. He made me yet somehow, I feel like he's not taking full responsibility for all of this. He just stood there, acting like a proud father welcoming his lost daughter back as if he had done nothing wrong! I'm starting to understand why you're a sociopath!"

She was waiting for a witty come back but it never came. Instead, she heard him laugh softly.

"You just had a taste of my life," he chuckled.

"I'm just an accident." she whispered more to herself than him.

"You're more than that." Screw unresolved feelings, he thought, he was going to explore them to his heart's content!

She was about to tell him off when she felt his warm breath on her neck.

He was way too close and his smell brought forbidden memories in her mind. Memories she didn't really want to think about. He wasn't even touching her but she felt his heat in her back.

"What did you do to me 452?" he whispered in her ear.

"What do you mean?" she tried, her voice shacking though she tried to hide it.

"I mean, why can't I spend a day without thinking about you? Why does your voice get my heart to beat faster?"

"I…I…" she stuttered. "We shouldn't be doing this," she managed to croak out as his lips came in contact with her skin which made her heart skip a beat. She could have sworn she had a little orgasm on the stool of his father's kitchen as her toes curled.

She had the presence of mind of saying, bedroom before either of them was too lost in eachother to forget their surroundings.

Every inch of skin that he touched burst alive. She wanted to go fast, but he was painfully slow. As he did one night before, he encased her wrists in his hands immobilizing her though both of them knew that if she wanted break away, she could.

He was trailing a line of fire on her skin with his mouth and his tongue, biting, sucking, her neck first, then her nipples.

He loved every little noises she made for him. The last time they were in this position, he didn't have much control over his senses. This time he was going to enjoy all of her. She might have been made for war, but her body was a grown up's playpen, and he planned to enjoy her for a long, long time.

"What did you do to me Max?" He had called her by her name! Why did he have to do that now when she was losing her mind! He was pushing all her right buttons and he had noticed how sensitive she was in that place, just in the crook of her neck. There! He'd done it again. Her toes curled.

He helped her out of her top before he put his arms back on her, his hands on her hips already working on her shorts. She was on fire and it was all because of him.

"The same thing you do to me." her voice came out husky and hoarse.

"Why did he have to make you so beautiful!" he whispered as he continued his ministrations. He played her body like a pianist play its intrument. His every touch made her react. Everyt touch got a note/sound out of her.

"Ames…" She moaned.

"What Max…" So it wasn't just a slip of his tongue. At that moment, at the use of her name, she melted.

He liked seeing her this way, he liked that a touch of his hands was enough to make her moan and yearn for more. When he felt her shudder, he left her nipples alone, put his hands on either side of her head, and kissed her. He took possession of her full pouty lips. Those lips that he'd desperately wanted to kiss for months now.

She felt his erection through his pyjamas, and grinded herself on him, plastering herself on him.

"Faster..." she ordered.

They were going to do each other tonight, and nothing was going to stop them.