Chapter Three

He'd expected to be interrogated about Zack, since they seemed so worried about getting him back. He'd expected to be worked over until he told them where Zack was, and he knew that he was probably just doped up enough for it to work. He'd expected to at least be asked about him, at least once.

He hadn't expected what was actually happening.

"You think someone's coming to save you, soldier boy?"

But he really, really hated it.

"You think anyone cares about the pretty little G.I. Joe doll?"

He really, really needed to get out of there.

Alec blinked against the fog in his brain and forced himself to think. He was still in the embalming room, but Lux had moved him from the table to a metal chair that had been standing in the corner before. He'd wanted to fight his way free when she'd moved him, girl or no, because he had to get out of there. But before she'd untied him, she'd dosed him with something else, something that kept his muscles sluggish but not as unresponsive as whatever Bird had used. Her drugs were messing with his head, too, because he found himself suddenly unable to say no to her, no matter how much he wanted to.

Of course, the fact that she'd sunk those damned spiked nails of hers into the back of his neck, only millimeters from his spine, might have had something to do with his willingness to behave himself, too.

So he was strapped into the armless metal chair with his arms down at his sides. There were restraints around his wrists and elbows, ankles and knees, with one strap around his chest and another around his head. She'd completely destroyed his shirt since he'd been sitting there, slicing through it and leaving it hanging in tattered shreds from his shoulders. She spent her time alternating between walking around in front of him, taunting him, and stabbing him with those spikes at random intervals.

"To make sure you're paying attention," she'd said.

Obviously, she didn't think he was paying enough attention at that point, because she sank the spikes on her right hand into the left side of his chest, curling them underneath his collarbone. He squirmed against the pain, unwilling to cry out and worried about the damage he could do to himself if he moved too much. He'd lost count of how many of those little puncture wounds he had covering his arms, neck and chest.

Lux leaned forward over him, her eyes filled with both lust and malevolence.

"So, who's coming to save you, pretty?" she asked, her voice oozing out of her mouth.

He turned his head away as far as the strap across his forehead would allow and refused to answer her, as he'd been doing for the past who-knew-how-long that he'd been in that chair. He just needed a minute, just to clear his mind and get his head back on straight. He just needed to get control of his own body again, so he could get himself out when Max got there.

Max was coming. He knew she was. Maybe she'd come alone, or maybe she'd bring Zack. Maybe she'd come busting through the door with Logan in his exoskeleton. He really didn't care who she brought with her, as long as she got there before too much longer, because the whole situation was really starting to get to him. But Max was coming.

Lux punished him for his lack of response by moving her hand, ripping through skin and muscle as she dragged her fingers down his chest. He felt the edges of the spikes catching on his collarbone and heard the grinding sound they made, and he couldn't hold back the small cry that passed his lips.

"If they're coming to save you, then where are they?" Lux continued. "If they care so much about you, then why aren't they here?" She stepped back slightly, keeping her nails embedded under his collarbone but tugging against them a bit. He moaned softly, but she didn't stop moving until he felt the insides of her thighs pressing against the outsides of his.

He refused to turn his head back to face her; he refused to answer her. The reward for his disobedience was the flash of spikes emerging from the fingernails on her left hand before sinking into the tender flesh under the ribs on his right side. He bit his lip to keep from crying out again, but a whimper escaped.

Max was coming. He just had to hang in there a little longer, because Max was coming. They'd grabbed him from Crash in front of dozens of witness. She had to know he was missing, and she had to know who'd taken him. Max was coming.

"I think I'll keep you when Eddy's done," Lux said suggestively. She retracted the spikes on her left hand from his ribs, and he felt the sticky wetness running down his stomach in small rivulets, but he ignored it. After so much time alone with this woman, they were far from the only places he was bleeding.

He could remember flirting with Lux once, what seemed like a lifetime ago, and he wondered why he'd ever done that. He hadn't actually been attracted to her, had he? Because he had never wanted to pull away from a woman as much as he wanted to run from her at that moment. But there was nothing he could do as she sat down in his lap and wriggled forward until her lower body was pressed against his. He turned back to face her again, but still refused to speak.

'Max is coming,' he told himself again. 'It's almost over. Max is coming.'

"My own little toy soldier. My own pretty, pretty doll to play with."

She brought the fingers of her left hand to her mouth, touching them with her tongue, tasting the blood that covered them. He wanted to turn his head and look away again, but he couldn't. He was almost frozen in place, his eyes locked on the bizarre sight in front of them.

'God, Max, where are you?'

"No one's coming. You know that." If he could just shut out her voice for a few seconds, if he could just concentrate, if he could just ignore her until these drugs got out of his system and he could focus again. She was lying; she had to be lying.

"Max is coming," he whispered. He didn't realize that he'd said it out loud, and he didn't understand the smile that spread across Lux's face.

He did understand what she was doing when she pulled her right hand away from his collarbone, and he felt the pull of the spikes catching on the edges of his bone again. She didn't bother licking her fingers this time, though. She bent forward and pressed her tongue against the open wounds, licking away the blood that oozed from them. She straightened back up, gave him a smile that showed her blood-covered teeth, then wiped away a few of the drops that stuck to her lips with the tips of her fingers.

"Max isn't coming, pretty," she whispered. She took the sides of his head between her hands and held him steady, forcing him to look at her no matter how badly he wanted to look away. She leaned even further forward, until he felt the warm gusts of her breath against the side of his neck and felt her lips touch the tip of his ear.

'Max is coming. Max is coming. Max is coming.'

"Max doesn't even know you're gone," Lux whispered into his ear before pulling back slightly and planting her still-bloody lips against his.

One of her hands moved away from his face, and suddenly she was shoving that damned needle into the side of his neck again. He felt his muscles go lax almost immediately. She reached behind his head and pulled on something, and the top of the chair reclined until he was almost flat on his back.

When she started pulling away what remained of his shirt and tugging at the waist of his jeans, he closed his eyes. He was a soldier, an assassin, built to be stronger and faster than any human, but there was nothing he could do to save himself. He'd been taught since childhood how to detach himself when he found himself in a compromised position from which escape was impossible. He'd done it before, and he was good at it. He let himself fade away, let his mind go almost totally blank. Only one thought remained.

'Max isn't coming.'

Max paced up and down the clinic hallway nervously.

What had happened in the parking garage under Fogel Tower would haunt her for weeks, if not longer. Zack had been completely under Manticore's spell, almost as though Renfro herself had reached out from her grave to take her revenge. He'd been determined to kill Logan, and had very nearly succeeded.

She'd been forced to electrocute him, send thousands of volts of electricity surging through her own brother's body, to save Logan's life. She'd thought she'd killed him.

But Dr. Carr had told them that Zack would be fine, that the electricity had erased his memory again, and that he'd be waking up not knowing who he was, but that he'd be all right. Max sincerely hoped that Dr. Carr was right about everything he said. She and Logan had come up with a good plan to get Zack out of Seattle, to keep him safe for the rest of his life, but it depended on him never remembering who he was.

Zack had gone into surgery an hour earlier, for a delicate but completely safe procedure that would remove the exo-harness from his arm. Zack would heal completely in a day or two, and Dr. Carr had decided to keep him sedated until all of his skin had grown back. If everything went according to plan, Zack would wake up believing he'd never been anything but a normal, average – if incredibly strong – human.

All in all, they were making the best of an incredibly bad situation, and she knew that. So why did she have a feeling of dread in the pit of her stomach?

"Max?" Logan was sitting on a couch in the waiting room, watching her pace back and forth. "He's going to be okay."

"Oh, I know," she answered. She made herself sit down on the chair across from him and forced her knee to stop bouncing up and down. "I've just got this feeling."

"What kind of feeling?"

"Like there's something wrong," she said distantly. She shook her head and focused on Logan again. "I can't explain it. I don't even know that it's anything to do with Zack. Just... something."

She'd had all the sitting still she could handle. She pushed herself back to her feet and started pacing again.

"Just relax," Logan said calmly. "Whatever it is, I'm sure we'll know about it soon enough. There's no point in getting yourself all worked up over something that hasn't happened yet."

"I know that. I do. It's just..." She stopped her pacing and turned to face Logan from across the room. "I can't shake it. Something really, really bad is going to happen, Logan. I know it. I just don't know what it is."

Alec wasn't unused to waking up in unfamiliar settings and not remembering how he got there, so that alone wasn't enough to bother him. He had been trained for this, after all, schooled time and again in how to interpret his surroundings and adapt to them in a matter of moments. He was also no stranger to waking up in restraints, feeling as though he were emerging from a drug-induced loss of consciousness. It hadn't been long since he'd woken up exactly like that in the basement at Manticore, when he'd had to convince PsyOps that he wasn't as crazy as his twin brother, the serial killer.

The problem was that in this instance, waking up in restraints, he knew where he was and how he'd gotten there. And he knew that it was most definitely somewhere he did not want to be.

It just wasn't possible for him to do anything about it.

It was a pain in his left arm that had woken him, a sharp, biting pain that told him some sort of needle – a big one, from the feel of it – was being shoved through his skin just above his wrist. He waited for the inevitable numbness to start spreading again, but it didn't. Instead there was a click and a whirr, and the vaguely disturbing and mildly painful sensation of suction against the inside of his vein. Then another sharp stab, another needle, and a rush of cold under his skin. Then both needles were taped into place.

He blinked his eyes slowly, trying to bring himself to full wakefulness so he could take in his surroundings. His jeans were back on and zipped up, which was at least a better situation than he'd been in when Eddy had gotten back. That wasn't a pleasant memory, either Eddy walking in or what was going on when he did, and it wasn't one he'd be revisiting any time soon. Alec honestly didn't know who Eddy had been angrier at, Lux or him.

The bruises he could feel on his face, chest and back – and since when could an Ordinary throw him around like that? – said it was probably him.

He was back on the table again, with the straps back around his ankles, wrists and chest. But this time, they'd gone even further, because his knees and elbows were secured individually, there was an extra strap across his hips, one across his shoulders, and he couldn't move his head. He'd been seriously injured before, so he recognized the feeling of the tube down his throat that was moving oxygen in and out of his lungs. That meant that he couldn't breathe on his own for some reason, but he was at a loss as to why. He also couldn't really move his muscles, though they did respond to him a little bit. He'd obviously been able to open his eyes with some effort, and he was twitching his fingers, hoping to work some muscle control back into the rest of his arm.

He felt Lux's hand on his forehead and wanted to pull away from her, but he couldn't. He turned his eyes toward her as she clucked her tongue at him.

"Poor stubborn pretty. You really don't want to be awake right now."

He didn't know what she meant by that, and he tried to ask her with his eyes, but she wasn't understanding him and he wasn't even sure why he was trying. It wasn't like she was an ally, not after what she'd done to him. Then he felt something pushing down on his lower right side. It didn't really hurt, it was just pressure, but it was hard enough to make his eyes water. Someone else was unbuttoning his jeans, tugging them down over his right hip, but that didn't make any sense. Lux was standing beside him, so who was doing that, and why?

When he looked back at Lux again, her expression had changed. Instead of the cold, taunting look she'd worn since he'd gotten there, she looked almost sad. Regretful? Apologetic? He didn't understand the change in her attitude at all, but he was pretty damn sure he didn't like it.

"You're going to want to hold still," she said. "I mean, I don't know what happens if you move, but I don't think it'll be very good."

"It'll kill him is what it'll do," Eddy said from the other side of the table, and Alec figured out not only who had been pushing on his right side, but why. He also realized that his jeans weren't being pulled off, but just out of someone's way. Words ran through his mind: Eddy telling Bird and Tuck that the boxes were full of livers and kidneys, saying something about "tinkering" with him, talking about having a fresh supply of organs...

Oh, shit.

Eddy leaned forward and waved a scalpel in his face. "Sharp little buggers, these. Figure they can slice clean through an artery if you're not careful. I'm only going for a kidney, but ya never know what I might hit if you're squirmin'."

This couldn't be happening. No, this wasn't real. There was no way he wasn't imagining this. No, no, no.

He felt the smaller, localized pressure of the blade against his skin, and his first instinct was to pull away, but his muscles were useless. Being able to wiggle the tip of a finger wasn't going to help him now. When he felt the knife break the skin, his body wanted to curl up around the pain, but even if he weren't paralyzed, the restraints would have kept him from doing it. He was completely helpless, defenseless, and at the mercy of a petty – and apparently psychotic – thug who really, really hated him.

Lux was right; he didn't want to be awake for this. But he was, and he could feel it, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

Eddy started making the incision larger, and Alec could feel every slice through every layer of skin and muscle. The pain had reached a level he'd never felt before, had never even known existed, could never have possibly imagined. It burned with both fire and ice, an indescribable agony that clawed its way along his nerves, leaving him incapable of thinking about anything else. His stomach was roiling and churning, and it took what little focus he had left to keep himself from throwing up. He had a tube down his throat, his lungs weren't responding to him, and if he threw up, he'd drown on his own vomit.

He wanted to run, had never wanted to run so much in his life, but he couldn't. He couldn't move. He couldn't think. He couldn't scream. He couldn't breathe.

He was going to die like this.

Max wasn't coming. No one was coming. No one knew where he was, no one cared where he was, and he was going to die here.

'Just pass out.'

But he couldn't. He was alone, and if he passed out there'd be no one on watch, and why did that even matter right now? He was dying!

He felt the cool hand against his face, wiping away tears that he hadn't even realized were falling, and he grabbed on to it with his mind. His vision was gone, and his open eyes saw nothing but a bright blanket of white. His hearing was distorted by a muffled ringing, but he could just make out the cadence and tones of a familiar voice whispering in his ear. It was softer and more soothing that it had ever been before, and he took comfort in its existence even though he didn't really know who it belonged to and he couldn't understand the words.

'Max... Max, you're here. Get me out of here. Help me, please!'

The voice slowly sank into his consciousness, and he forced himself to focus on it. The sounds formed words, and he began to understand what it was saying. He latched onto that voice and let it wash over him, grateful to have something other than the pain to ground him, no longer caring who was talking to him, only grateful that someone was there.

"Let go, pretty," the voice said. "Just let go. Stop fighting. It'll all be over soon."

He didn't care who said it; all he knew was that the voice was right. One way or the other, it would all be over soon. Maybe that should have bothered him, but he couldn't really bring himself to care. And maybe it made him weak, but he really didn't want to be around to find out how it ended.

He let his eyes close, let the voice carry him away, and let go.