She'd been doing more than her share of Eyes Only missions lately. Sure, she was Logan's friend, and he had offered to help her find her brothers and sisters in exchange for a little legwork, but now their quid pro quo didn't seem to be at the forefront of the man's mind. Maybe she could take a break once in a while to live her life, have some dinner like they used to. Max's mouth watered at the thought of Pasta Tricolore and a pre-pulse wine, remembering a time when the retrovirus wasn't even a twinkle in some Manticore geek's eye.
No, instead her interactions with the old-money cyber-journalist were relegated to gallivanting about town at oh-dark-thirty, fighting the good fight on an empty stomach. Like tonight, she thought, looking over her shoulder at Alec.
"Max, you know you don't have to continue this ridiculous charade of being in love with Logan. Just admit you want me." Alec laughed at his own joke.
They were riding her ninja back to Logan's after a successful recon mission, which landed them square in a mud pit. Both transgenics looked as though they were on the third week of a shower strike, dirt-caked and wet in all the right crevasses in all the wrong ways.
At the towers, Max and Alec headed up to Logan's penthouse. Alec let himself and Max in. As they rounded the corner to his office, Logan asked, "How'd it go?" He looked up from his screen to see the two muddy figures standing in the doorway.
"Just peachy," Alec said.
"Two guards at each entrance, with alternating change times, seven digit entrance code 6, 7, 9, 4, 8, 5, 7," she said. Logan took the numbers down. Max continued, "And there's a giant pit of mud on the other side of the fence."
Logan laughed.
"How about a 'thank you for doing all the work, Max and Alec, since there's no way I could do this myself, what with being an ordinary'?" Alec asked.
"Of course, thanks, guys," Logan said returning to his screen. "According to my contact, you should be okay to break in and grab those discs tomorrow night around eight thirty."
Max scoffed. Logan looked back toward the bar-coded girl. "What?"
"Logan, I'm not your personal spy, you know." She folded her arms.
Logan looked offended. "Well, yeah, you kinda are. Why are you all the sudden not interested in our deal?"
Alec stepped back, fully aware of the shovel Logan had just used to dig himself into a grave, and fully aware of Max's short fuse at the suggestion that she was someone's property.
Anger burned in her eyes. "You're wrong. I don't belong to you."