Last time: "That was a really shitty thing to say, Max."
6 months ago
"You know what I mean," Max deflected poorly. She twitched toward him, but he stood still.
The blond transgenic shook his head. "Not good enough, Max." His torso tensed, his arms crossed, and his feet seemed planted firmly in place. His mind went to a dark place. He knew he could hurt her; he could call out how her unit, her family, was destroyed when they'd all chosen to ignore Brother Zack's orders to split up. Their escape and subsequent ten years of hiding and running for their lives was the support for his argument not to tell Alethea and Tony about one another, not yet. If they couldn't be tied together, they couldn't be targeted together.
Instead, he tamped down on the reflex to protect himself with an offensive move. He schooled his features and took a shallow breath, fed up with himself for feeing so angry. "You're right, I have no family."
The times he saw Max cry were starting to increase. Why was she so tearful when she was the one slicing at him? Still, he hated to see her cry. Before his countenance softened, his phone buzzed loudly in his pocket. He checked the ID, but knew it could only be Dix. "I'm going to get some fresh air," he said to Max.
Alec left the bedroom and Max heard his seemingly-unaffected footfalls as he ascended the creaky stairs.
A few tears leaked down her cheeks and she sat on the bed. Way to fuck it all up, she admonished herself. She wondered what the hell was wrong with her. How did she know exactly what to say to push away the only person she thought she'd never be able to push away? She'd said terrible things to him in the past, things for which she now felt deeply ashamed, but he just kept showing up for her.
She wanted to keep arguing, to make him see that there was safety in numbers. If she and her brothers and sisters had stayed together, all together, they would have been unstoppable. She wanted to point to Terminal City as proof. They all worked together and protected each other; they looked out for one another.
But still, Alec thought of togetherness as a death sentence. How messed up were his extra ten years with Manticore that he'd lost touch with his humanity? In Manticore, didn't he have friends, brothers and sisters? Someone?
The name wiggled into her mind as she remembered their time underground. He did have a close friend, something of a brother. Biggs, she recalled. And he had been murdered by an anti-transgenic mob.
It was a startling and dejecting realization that he'd paid exorbitantly for merely looking like another soldier from her unit. Having the same genetic code as Ben had nearly cost him his life. Despite his stellar performances on solos, decorations to his credit, no amount of family could have saved him from the excruciating pain of reindoctrination and PsyOps after Ben's death.
And somehow, with all the shit in his past, he managed to make an amazing partner. He was a genius and sarcastic and mischievous, an amazing lover, the best fighter, funny, cunning, gorgeous. But more than all of that, he accepted her, loved her, supported her, and made her feel safe. Like a family.
And then I tell him he doesn't know what family is, what loss is, she scolded mentally, hating herself for hurting him. And for what? To be right? To prove I know something about family? A new rush of tears pooled at her lids and she tried to blink them away.
She couldn't ruminate on those thoughts any further, since her own cell phone buzzed with an incoming call, too. She rolled her eyes and calmed her breathing and voice, answering, "Yeah, Logan."
"Hey, Dix," Alec started, passing by Lydecker and Alethea. "How's it going in the land of milk and honey?" He stepped out onto the main deck and walked over to the railing.
"Is that some kind of tea reference?" If Dix detected Alec's soured mood, he didn't let on.
The blond X5 brushed it off. "Forget it. What's up?"
"Remember you asked me to look into weird murders and strings of unresolved deaths? Well, I found a few."
Alec paced around and noticed Lydecker and Alethea headed back below deck, the young woman mentioning something about checking the map. "What'd you find?" Hearing the plastic tapping, he closed his eyes, secretly wishing Dix didn't have to use his computer while they talked. Maybe someone could invent a quieter keyboard. Or maybe a machine that transcribed thoughts. Something.
"Well, first, I wrote a program to check records across the US for any strings of unresolved murders in a cluster of the same area. I found a few – your typical 'presumed serial killer' reports where the perp was never apprehended. But they all seemed kind of, I don't know, suburban."
"Meaning what," Alec pressed. "That they weren't very exciting?"
Dix huffed on the other side and Alec could practically hear the gears turning in Dix's head as he tried to find the right words to express his thoughts. "It's like they lacked a certain… intelligence. A certain elegance. I mean, one was attributed to a guy in Texas who apparently had a fetish with foot models. A kind of 'Jack the Slipper' for shoe companies – the more exotic the better."
He wondered if Dix had come up with that on his own or if it was a news clip. Alec asked, "What were the others?"
"Oh, okay. There was a lady serial in Florida who murdered patrons of strip joints. A duo in Tennessee that attacked couples."
"I'm starting to see what you mean about inelegant," Alec added, staring out the into the water. They were sort of… pedestrian. "Anything look like something Manticore might do?"
"So then," Dix started again as if he hadn't heard Alec, "I wrote another program to check for mass deaths, and found about a dozen of them over the past couple of years. Unexplained, unsolved. Wouldn't say they were murders, but whole sites were destroyed and everyone on the premises snuffed out as quick as the flick of a switch."
"Really." This was more like the info he thought they'd find, and for that reason, Alec wasn't too surprised.
"You were out on solo two years ago when a passenger train collided with a freight train. Killed everyone on board both trains in one huge explosion. 327 people were reported to have been on those trains."
"Explosion? What was the cargo?"
The tapping of keys sounded for a moment. "Looks like it was mostly rock. Official word was that there was a single container of flammable gas, but the manifests did not show any gases."
Alec nodded even though Dix could not see him. "What else?"
Humming while typing, Dix continued. "There was an accident at a mine six months ago. Forty souls buried alive in a cave-in, maybe an explosion there, too."
His mind processing these 'accidents,' Alec narrowed his eyes as if that would help him solve the mystery. They just weren't enough on their own to suggest Dark Web involvement. "So, nothing really pointing strongly to Dark Web activity?"
"Actually, these were just inside the US. When I adjusted the search to worldwide, I found several cases of research facilities that were bombed in Mozambique, Turkey, Dubai, tech companies where everyone who worked there was exposed to biological warfare types of diseases and the sites cauterized – those were in Indonesia and the Phillipines, even some close to Finland and Sweden."
Alec paced to the aft of the vessel. "What were they researching?"
"Wait, Avi," Dix said on the other end. "Go back a screen. Yeah, that one." After a couple seconds, the pale-skinned transgenic continued. "Regenerating organs using multiple species' stem cells, genetic research, biological warfare, IVF and surrogacy in transplants, regrowing reproductive systems, the list goes on."
Alec pushed between his eyes with his forefinger. "Were they Manticore?"
"Hard to tell. Didn't look like our teams."
"What do you mean it didn't look like our teams?"
"Satellite images from Cale's informant net," Dix answered. "Before and after images."
"Anyone claim credit for the damage?"
"Negative."
The locations were sprinkled all around, and that confirmed the X5's fears. Maybe they weren't called Manticore, but these other players in the genetics game were in the business of lending their soldiers to others' causes. They were busy wiping out their competition, ensuring their own foothold. Or if it was a Manticore soldier with a grudge, that rogue alum traipsed around the world, eliminating anything that could be construed as Manticore or a Manticore-like operation.
"Anything else on Fink or White?"
"Not yet, but we did get a hit on that program we wrote. We didn't get a soldier; it's better than that. We got one of Manticore's scientists. Avi's working on trying to get her to come forward."
Well, that was one bright spot in this shit show of a day. "I don't know how you did it, but that's great. Hopefully she knows something."
"Not bad for a 'freak,' eh?"
"You're the Freak Elite," Alec complimented.
The line was quiet for a moment. "That's it, really," Dix said bluntly.
"Alright, buddy. Thanks for the update."
"Yep." Dix ended their call.
Logan cleared his throat. "Hey, Max."
"What's going on?" she asked, hoping this was not a social call. Thankfully, he got right to the point.
"I found something last night I thought you should know. A U.S. government report about a special ops mission in the early 90s indicated a guy named Stadler returned from a failed mission and reported the other five team members KIA. Including Lydecker."
"What?"
"Has to be Manticore who faked his death to protect him. He's lying to you, Max. You can't trust him."
Max's brows rose in concern. "Lydecker was a G-man before he was recruited into Manticore, so what? I was Manticore before I escaped; does that make me a liar? Untrustworthy?"
"Max, he tried to kill you numerous times."
Did he? she thought. Or did he lead his team right to me, only to allow another escape? She stood up in the cabin. She replayed several memories of Lydecker in her mind, including the story he told her about Tutu and the ballerina. Something about this report just didn't feel right, but that didn't mean she was ready to write him off altogether. "Logan, you need to listen to me. You need to stop looking around. You're putting yourself in crosshairs, you and anyone else you look into." She almost tacked on 'Dr. Adair, for example,' but if he knew about her demise, he probably already felt guilty enough.
She suddenly felt like such a hypocrite. Here she was begging Logan to stop digging for his own safety, but she couldn't extend the same protections to Alethea and Tony?
"You don't think it's a coincidence that you're all in Greece, and so is this Stadler guy?" interrupted Logan.
"How do you know Stadler's in Greece?"
Logan was quiet for a moment, hesitant to admit it. "I looked into all the names on that report. Four of 'em are dead – well, presumed dead. They never reappeared after the report. Stadler and Lydecker are the only remaining members of that team. Lydecker's somehow kept off the radar for the better part of twenty years, undoubtedly with Manticore's help, but Stadler has left a trail. Ex-wife, employment history outside of the military. Got a job in the languages department at the Ilisia campus."
Max gritted her teeth. "This is exactly what I'm talking about. I'm telling you that your actions have consequences. Dr. Adair is dead, and who knows how White found her originally?"
"Are you suggesting her death is my fault?" Logan asked defensively. "I vetted her."
"I remember." To Alec's point, they had followed White to Greece, but maybe he wouldn't have killed Dr. Adair if he thought Max, Alec and Lydecker didn't know about her. If he was somehow tipped off that Max and Alec were going to visit her, and why, he may have decided that she was a threat. Didn't want their 'transgenic filth' to be able to translate the runes, too.
After a beat, she treaded a little further. "Have you considered upping your security?"
She could hear the whir of the exoskeleton, which meant he was probably pacing now. "And now you're flat-out stating it was my fault. If not for me, you wouldn't have had any idea where to go to translate those runes."
She didn't bother telling him about Alethea. It might take just one careless keystroke and suddenly she could be on White's hit list. "I just don't want you to get caught in the line of fire because of something you're doing for me," she tried. "Not again."
Huffing with frustration on the other end, Logan remained quiet for a moment. Tensions were too high, and he was smart enough to know he wasn't helping by getting so emotional. He tried another tactic. "Max, this goes so much deeper than we thought."
"Yeah, it runs deep. And it runs dangerous." Like a river of fire, her mind supplied unhelpfully.
Her comment seemed to push a button he didn't realize he had. He'd dealt with assassins, X5s, crooked politicians, news media, gangsters… but suddenly the Familiars and Manticore were too dangerous for him? "So, what, you're denying my assistance? Suddenly you're concerned for my safety? What do you care? You're with him now."
Max looked out the window, simultaneously angry, sad, guilty and scared. How had this taken such a drastic turn so quickly? "Doesn't mean I want you dead."
"Don't worry, Max. I know what I'm doing."
He disconnected their call and Max exhaled at the harbor outside the window.
Alec climbed off the boat and walked along the darkened docks, his thoughts just as obscured, shifting back to Max and their tiff. It wasn't necessarily that she was wrong, per se. Prior to the past couple of years, he might actually agree with her that he lacked certain familial and friendly bonds. He had business relationships, tenuous acquaintances that might turn on him for a better deal. He had Biggs, but he'd also lost him.
But couldn't she see that he'd grown? That he'd developed meaningful relationships and friendships with many of her same circle – OC, Sketchy, even Normal to some degree – as well as other transgenics? He was mostly liked, well-respected inside and outside of Manticore. Joshua was nearly his best friend. Hell, he'd even cultivated something of a working partnership with Logan, and personally, his tolerance for the journalist was improving, but still left something to be desired.
But what really scared him was that, wasn't she in this thing with him as much as he was with her? The sudden idea terrified him: maybe she wasn't as in love with him as he was with her. Maybe he wasn't her home like she was his. Maybe he wasn't her family.
Overcome with sadness that his imagined future with her was at stake now, brought to the surface by a thoughtless barb hurled in the heat of the moment, his heart ached with shame at the thought he still wasn't good enough for her. He squared his shoulders and nodded resolutely. He couldn't just give up on her, on them.
I still have a job to do, as your champion.
His boots touched dry land and he checked his surroundings. The night was relatively quiet, maybe a little too quiet, and as the boats in the harbor bobbed with the slight night currents, he felt an idea coming on.
He kept to the darkness where possible and made his way to the market, itself silent save for the ambient noise of the lazily lapping water. The street fair merchants had their kiosks and pagodas boarded up in colorful creams and midnight blues, and he stopped in his tracks to peer behind him. He heard a quiet shuffling that stopped when he stopped, and continued when he continued.
I'm being followed, he realized. Sounded like two sets, light footfalls, quiet breathing. Let's see how far they're willing to go.
A breeze brought a faint scent of whipped vanilla and cool strawberry on it when he passed the bistro where he and Max spent lovely mornings tasting crepes and pastries. He walked by the industrial area where he and Max had hidden from the adult henchmen and satiated one another against that metal door. The following footsteps continued.
Finally he came to a strip of warehouses which seemed empty, and the idea started to form against his memory of Burrard Inlet. He'd hung from those cuffs for too long. He rubbed absently at his wrists, even though they'd healed weeks ago.
Had they checked this address before? He couldn't remember. He closed his eyes and imagined the map spread out on the table. He followed his and Max's green lines, and Lydecker's orange ones, as they zigzagged all over the harbor and its surrounding areas. Each line terminated in a black circle to indicate their stopping point. They hadn't checked this bank of buildings, but his intuition informed that he wouldn't check them either.
He started to build more 'evidence' to support his forming theory. Burrard Inlet was on the water. Fink and White submerged there in a submarine. Max, Lydecker and he were also on the water. They'd had zero luck with surface streets, buildings and sewers. They never saw where their pursuers ran off to after they'd stopped giving chase, and none of their black circles pointed toward a single location; they all just sort of butted up to the waterline. Plus, they'd spotted the little gray seal girl once, and she seemed like the kind of hybrid a genetics company might create. Alec realized that maybe the new base was not in the sewers, not in the highrises, not in the construction buildings.
Maybe the new base was underwater.
Pulling her dark, thick hair over one shoulder, Alethea stared across the harbor, watching the way the vessels swayed on the water and thinking about how the sea demanded fluidity. The wind pushed until small crests formed, the life underneath the surface moved with the currents, which also had an effect on the waves. The vessels themselves interrupted the surface, but the water still enveloped around everything, until it all became one, rolled as one, danced as one. And through it all, light somehow found its way down, illuminating parts of the darkness. She imagined Max's runes dancing along her skin in the same fashion, colliding and separating in a language she understood, despite not being able to actually read it. Comprehension dodged away from her like repelling magnets. What was she missing?
Lydecker stood next to her, one hand on the railing. "What's on your mind, kid?"
Seemed Lydecker had some powers of observation, himself. She broke into a soft smile. The corners of his eyes gentled and the blues of his irises deepened, warmed. "My mother spoke of you once."
Lydecker wasn't sure how surprised he looked. Anastasia would have been too smart to ever speak his name aloud after her escape. Hell, maybe she would have had the Forget-Me-Not Protocol administered to her; she would have been safer for it.
"She said she hoped one day I would find a love like she had. One full of shared secrets and passions, one that brought children, if that's what I wanted. She stared into the water like you do, like a part of you is missing."
Shifting in his stance, Lydecker pressed his lips together. He knew their affair had brought a child the moment he saw Tony. But he wondered if Alethea knew her father. There had been no mention of her father thus far.
"She wouldn't tell me." The young protege discerned more than he thought possible. "She said it was too dangerous to tell me who he was."
Who else would be too dangerous a person to be involved in Anastasia's and Alethea's lives?
"But what I want to know is," she paused, turning to look the older man in the eye, "who is my brother?"
Alec had about three miles left to get back to The Anastasia. No, not he, he amended, but they. His two trackers hung back, shadowed by the architecture and darkness of night. He needed to dispatch them before they discovered where he and Max were staying, because if they discovered the location of Lydecker's boat, they'd have a war at the main deck.
His phone buzzed again. He checked the ID and answered. "Hey."
"I just found something while shadowing Logan's informant net, a Manticore report. It was pretty well-hidden; doesn't look like Cale has seen it yet."
At Dix's dramatic pause, Alec rolled his eyes impatiently. "I'm all ears." He stopped his brisk walk and leaned against the railing and casting his eyes over the horizon again.
"Taken literally, that would be weird." Dix paused again, but Alec said nothing. "Looks like Manticore dispatched a team into enemy territory in the early 90s. It was also a rescue mission for the six members of a U.S. special black ops team that had been sent a month prior to eliminate a terrorist cell. I'll send you the file real quick."
Extrapolating the reason why this was important enough to go on Dix's radar, Alec quickly put the pieces together. "So, someone else was using Manticore soldiers as assassins for hire…" His phone vibrated and he put Dix on speaker so he could navigate to the documents, and asked, "Where was this?"
"Maseru, Lesotho."
"South Africa." When he opened the file, he was met with blood and carnage. The photos of the scene were grim, whole labs filed with dead men, swathed in dark blood and all manner of bodily detritus. These people were torn apart.
"One guy, Stadler, from the U.S. team escaped before Manticore was sent in, and other than one guy, there were no survivors. Their names were redacted in the initial reports, but a couple years after the pulse, someone else put the documents back online. Lydecker was the one rescued."
"You're shitting me." He'd heard Lydecker mention Stadler before. He was the colonel's contact in Athens.
"I never understood that one. Is it supposed to be one person literally shitting another person out of their body? Or is it like someone's helping you shit?"
Alec disregarded the question. He remembered seeing part of Lydecker's file that mentioned his alcoholism and discharge. "But when he came back, the military discharged him."
"Right. And then the story goes cold."
Because that's when Manticore enlisted him? "Huh. I'll have to ask him-"
Alec's sentence was cut off as he was hauled over the railing and tossed right into the water.