"Someone else want to die here?" Alec shouted once Ames had left.
"It was the familiar's fault." someone shouted back.
"It was the familiar's fault." Alec repeated with disbelief. "Do you hear yourself?" he paused. "I don't see the familiar hurt here. I see one of our own dead and the other hurt."
He ran his hand in his hair out of frustration. "You're doing the human and the familiar's job for them. They treat us like animals, they see us as animals. They want us dead. Do you want to die?" He couldn't seem to stop. "By the Blue Lady, I want to live! Not just survive, hidden away here in TC. I want to live." he spelled out. "Clearly, you all need to decide what you're willing to fight for. If you want to run, no one's keeping you here. If you stay, this are going to change around here."
They just couldn't stay in Terminal City. He knew, and could understand, why she had decided to bring him here. Though they prided themselves to be independent, the X series were by nature – or should he say they were engineered to be - gregarious creatures, and when threatened they still wanted the confort of their own kind. That was the reason it had been easy to pick them up with the signal in the few hours after Manticore was burnt to the ground.
But if this place was to remain a safe place for the transgenic, and for his survival as well as theirs he needed it to be, they had to leave. They needed answers and they couldn't get them here. And he needed her to be safe. Once word got out that she was carrying his child, Transgenic Central wouldn't be safe for her either. Not as long as there were Jackys in their midst and there were a lot of them.
In a fight or flight position, he always faced the fight head on, but this time for her sake, he had to give his opponents his back. He couldn't fight them and protect her too. Especially since, knowing her, she would insist on fighting herself. Stubborn woman.
Strange how just a few weeks ago she was just a creature to him, and now, she was a woman. His woman.
His woman and his kid, kids, needed him. He had to take her and Ray out of the equation, out of the line of fire. At least for the time being. In the end, he was his father's son: he was willing to sacrifice his own kind for his family. He was a traitor.
Traitor. He had lived with that label a better part of his life. He thought he had crossed his I's and T's and earned the respect of his peers. But now, he was willingly wearing that label again. If traitor meant that his whole family would stay alive, then so be it.
Pacing back and forth, outside the infirmary, he had come to that conclusion: they had to leave, and the sooner the better.
Escape and evade. That's how the transgenic called it. Shame there wasn't a "Life as Fugitive" 101 class. Though, he guessed, once you were on the other side of the fence, you always looked back to see who was coming for you. There was no life, just a constant Escape and Evade exercise.
He had asked that question to Max. How did the 09ers did it? How did they survive? There was the Pulse, she had said. There was not going to be another pulse and he heard in her voice that it wasn't that easy. Afterall, she was just a kid when she escaped.
When they ran several scenarios together, she repeatedly remarked that he thought too much as a hunter. It was true. As a familiar, as a soldier, as an FBI agent, he was used to be the hunter, no the huntee. If they were going to survive, they needed to turn the tables on their enemy. Would he be able to kill his own kind without regret? Well, time will tell. In the meantime, they had to go.
He caught a familiar shadow at the corner of his eye. "My presence here is undermining your authority." he stated. "So I need to make myself scarce, but I'm not leaving without her."
"I know."
Ames was surprised by the acceptance, no resignation in his tone. He looked at 494. "I'm not dense." the X5 said. "And you kinda posted an ad in the TC Daily News when you shacked up with her 3 days straight during her heat." he shrugged. "Are you blushing?"
His pinched lips told Alec that the familiar was indeed blushing. He took pity on the older man and refrained from making another comment.
"In a few months time you're going to face an army. They are better trained, disciplined and have decades of preparation over you. Incidents like the one with 406 or Jacky as you called him is the reason they are going to win this war."
Alec didn't react. "They...uh?" his serious eyes belied the smirk on his lips. "You don't have to worry about us, and I do include you in that."
"I don't want spend the rest of my days like this." Ames exhaled. "I never thought I'd say this but I want the happy ending. Or at least something approaching that."
The dark blond transgenic chuckled. "What's funny?" the familiar asked.
"Nothing. It's just, I think I get why she likes you." When the older man raised his eyebrow, he continued. "You're both romantics."
"I wouldn't call myself romantic." There was nothing belligerent in Ames' tone as it was woont to be in the first days he arrived in TC.
"I'm just saying, she wants the happy ending too. She has been picturing Transgenic Paradise Island." They both smiled and then Alec nodded his goodbye.
As sure as he was about his decision, he didn't know how she would react. Despite the hateful looks directed his way, he had to admit that TC had been good to Ray. They had embraced his son like one of their own. He was the mismatched piece of the puzzle. Again. This time he could choose, he refused to be victim of his own circumstances, he was going to make his own puzzle, where with Max, and Ray, he fit perfectly.
The sound of the door opening made him turn around. "She's awake." Cat simply said. He simply nodded.
'Well, here goes nothing', he thought.
Of all the responses he was expecting from her – he had geared himself for a long argument – she was accepting.
"So you agree?" it was more a question than a statement.
"Don't look so surprised. You're dead set on leaving. You're not going to leave Ray, and the little guy has grown on me." She said with humour.
He wanted to say, 'I wasn't going to leave without either of you.' But they weren't that kind of...couple. He smiled, a sad smile and thought how strange was it that amidst all theirs problems, he realised they were something as mundane and human as a couple. He cuddled her closer on the narrow hospital bed.
"But now that you have decided that we should leave, where are we going to go and what are we going to do?" she continued. "What's you plan?"
"My father...he sent me something, after the Baltimore debacle." He almost stumbled on the word. Father.
He felt her nod.
"Okay." she simply said. There were plenty of things that they were going to argue about. The fact that they were going to leave was not one of them. "When?"
"Tomorrow." he whispered.
They were smuggled out of Seattle in the early morning and as soon as the transgenic population saw the back of White, he felt some of the tension ease. Alec could understand the feeling, but like Ray, the older White had grown on him and though he wouldn't say that he could kick back and enjoy a beer with the older man: he knew that the familiar could be trusted. 'Another one falling for those chocolate brown eyes.' he remarked to himself.
"All right people we need to turn things around in this town." he watched Mole, Dix, Joshua, Biggs nod. "It's not enough to survive, to rescue our kind. We need to start hunting. We need to have a better plan that Terminal City."
After months of sitting and taking the abuse, they needed to act, to be proactiveabout their future.
"Dix has been mapping the relationship of the familiars – and their sympathisers – in the Seattle area. We need to start by clearing the political scene here of all familiars and replace them with humans. They maybe against us, but their easier to kill and easier to manipulate."
"Some of them are good." intervened Joshua. "Like Original Cindy."
"Not all of them are like your friend." reacted Mole, spittng the word friend like the worst insult.
"But some of them are, and we need to find more people like her." argued Biggs.
"Okay, let's say we find more people like her, then what?" objected Mole. "It's not like the familiars are going to leave their seats to please us."
Dix nodded.
"Then we make them leave." Alec replied with a smirk. "Cece...you remember LA don't you."
Cece smiled back. "Yes I do. There's nothing better to drive someone out of offices than a sexual scandal. And they won't ever know that the transgenic trash they hunt are responsible."
Cece started to pace. "It can work." she suddendly looked at Alec and the others. "What's the time frame."
"More than you need."
As they walked out of the room, Alec had a spring in his step. They had plan. Wether it was going to work or not, they had a plan. They were really going to do it. He knew that in six months' time, some of them were going to die. That was the price of war, and they were going to face their greatest enemy.
But as he watched each soldier go about his tasks, as day after day they trained. He felt damned proud of his kind, of his family. Now, White and the rebels, and Sandeman and Max had to do their part.
They might yet see a day without the familiars.
