Chapter Four

Max walked into Logan's apartment with a sad smile on her face. She considered her encounter with Zack in the hospital hallway to be a victory, but it was a bittersweet one that she worried would haunt for years to come.

"Everything went okay?"

She smiled at Logan as she perched on the arm of the couch in the living room behind him. The decision for Logan to remain behind at the apartment while Max went to see if Zack's amnesia would stick had been mutual. Neither one of them wanted a repeat of what had happened in the parking garage in the early hours of Saturday morning. Even if Max's face had triggered Zack's memories again, they figured they could keep him away from Logan long enough to get him smuggled out of the city.

"Adam Thompson is on his way home to the ranch."

"And he doesn't remember?"

Max shook her head. "No, nothing. I thought he recognized me at first, but he didn't." In fact, Max was fairly sure that he had recognized her, even if he only thought he'd seen her face before. But it had been so easy to convince him that he didn't know her that she wasn't worried about any other memories flooding back to him again.

"So he finally got his wish." Logan's voice was wistful, and Max let the feeling flow through her as she nodded in response. "A normal life," Logan continued.

"A safe one," she answered. She stood and walked toward the office, stopping to lean against the door frame. "White and his dogs'll never find him now."

Logan suddenly looked almost as sad as Max felt, but she knew that those emotions weren't for Zack. "And you're all right with it?"

Max crossed her arms across her chest and her legs at the ankles. "You mean am I okay with never seeing my brother again?"

Logan nodded his confirmation and pushed himself across the office to near where she stood against the door.

"No, of course I'm not. I miss him already, Logan. So much." She shrugged as she looked down at him. "But I guess it's my turn to protect him now."

"Can you do what he did?" Logan asked sincerely and not unkindly. "Can you protect them all?"

Max shook her head. "Not by myself, no." She let a small smile turn up the corners of her lips as she looked back down. "Maybe with a little help, though."

Logan smiled back at her and nodded, obviously pleased with her answer. "I was hoping you'd say that." He turned away from her and pushed himself back to his desk.

"You've got something?" She uncrossed her arms and stood straight, walking across the office as Logan tapped on his keyboard.

"I've got a potential lead on those Steelheads that had Zack."

"What?" If Max's interest in Logan's lead hadn't been complete before, it certainly was after that. "How?"

"I don't think this is going to require your... talents, Max. At least not at first. But I thought you'd be interested in it."

"Are you kidding?" She moved as close to Logan as she dared, positioning herself behind him so that she could see his monitor across his shoulder. "I can't make Manticore pay for what they did to him, but I can kick some Steelhead ass." She leaned forward in eagerness, catching herself just short of putting her hand on his shoulder and pulling back quickly. "So what have you got?"

"You remember when I told you that I'd been tracking them for months, for that black market organ ring they've been running?"

"Yeah."

"One of my informants got an email from British Eddy yesterday." Logan hit the enter button on his keyboard, and an email popped up on the screen. "It's a sales flyer."

"They're moving organs again," Max said with disgust.

"More than that." Logan turned toward her, his expression at once both excited and concerned. "The sale offer is for an organ described as an 'amped-up super kidney.'"

Max let her confusion show on her face. "Super organs?"

Logan nodded, picking up a pencil and threading it through his fingers as he spoke. "Eddy and his gang aren't the smartest bunch, but they do know better than to lie to their customer base. So if they say they're selling a 'super kidney'..."

"It's from a Transgenic," Max finished the thought for him. "Because of Zack, they know what we are."

Logan nodded slowly and continued. "So the next question is – is it Zack's?"

"No," Max answered with a shake of her head. "Dr. Carr said that most of Zack's organs had been replaced with biosynthetics."

"So if it's not Zack's...?"

"Whose is it?"

Logan spun back to his computer again, tapping his pencil against the desk a few times before dropping it and starting to type again. "You don't know of any Transgenics who have gone missing in the past few days, do you?"

Max shook her head slowly as she turned to look out the front windows, at Seattle's distinctive and still impressive skyline. "They've all gone missing, Logan," she answered softly. "It's the only way they know to survive."

"So we set up a buy," Logan said from behind her. "We buy it, have Sam run a few tests, and find out..."

"We'd never know who it was. Our DNA database was destroyed." Max had never thought she would regret the fire that had destroyed Manticore, but at that moment, she did. How much information had been destroyed that could have been vital to their survival? "Buying it would be a waste of money that we might need for something else."

"What about keeping the secret of the Transgenics' existence from getting out?"

"Unless Eddy tells people that he's pulling organs out of genetically engineered soldiers from a secret government program, they'll just think the donor was juiced." Max spun back to face Logan quickly as a thought occurred to her. "But I do want your contact to meet up with them. And I want it to be me."

"Max..."

"No, Logan. They're selling Transgenic organs, and what they did to Zack..." She paused, collected her thoughts and took a deep breath. "I'll get the proof to keep them down your way. But I want to take them down my way first."

Logan had been shaking his head the entire time she'd been talking, and he didn't stop. "They know you. Two of them have seen you. You took Zack away from them, and they're not going to forget about you that easily, no matter how stupid they are." Max inhaled and opened her mouth, but Logan cut her off. "And before you say it, Alec's out, too. He was with you when you saved Zack, right?"

Max nodded reluctantly. "They knew him before that, anyway."

Logan's eyebrows raised in surprised curiosity, but he didn't say anything.

"So what do I do?" Max asked with a sigh.

"Go to work, Max. Treat it just like any other Monday afternoon. I'll contact my informant and have him arrange a meeting with them tonight. Hopefully, he'll be able to get me enough information that I can trace them back to their hangout. Once I've got that, I'll probably need you and Alec to go snoop around for me. Quietly," he added quickly. "No bickering."

Max rolled her eyes. "I'll try. But no promises." She flashed another smile in his direction and turned to leave. "Thanks, Logan," she said. "For everything."

"You're welcome, Max."

The elevator doors dinged as they closed behind her, and Logan turned back to his computer once more.

The first thing Max noticed when she walked in to JamPony was that Normal had apparently gotten over whatever fear Original Cindy had instilled in him the week before, because he was already yelling at her across the counter about being late. She ignored his words, brushed him off with a wave of her hand, and kept walking down the ramp.

The second thing she noticed was that O.C. and Sketchy were both hovering around her locker waiting for her to get there. Cindy, of course, knew the whole story on Zack. Sketchy only knew a few sanitized pieces of it, along with whatever Cindy had come up with to explain Zack's sudden 'illness.' But it was obvious that both of them were waiting for her and wanting to know how Zack was.

Remembering that Zack was headed for the life he'd always wanted – that he'd always deserved – Max forced a smile on to her face. She'd almost worked up to greeting them semi-cheerfully when Sketchy saw her across O.C.'s shoulder. He gestured to Cindy, who turned to face Max as she walked up to them.

"How is he, Boo?"

"How's Zack doin'?"

"He's fine," she said, answering both questions at once. She didn't know exactly what O.C. had told Sketchy about what was wrong with Zack, but she knew enough to feel safe in continuing with the story she'd thought up on her way over from Logan's. "The doc says he's gonna be fine, but thinks he'll get better faster in the mountains. Something about thin air being easier on his lungs or something." Silently, she sent O.C. a message that she had more to say, and Cindy's expression confirmed that she understood.

"Poor guy," Sketchy said, completely oblivious to the wordless conversation going on between the two women next to him. "I mean, he just gets home, and he gets electrocuted in a freak elevator accident..."

Sketchy kept talking, but Max's attention wandered to Cindy, who was darting glances around the room as though she was searching for someone. Max looked, too, out of pure instinct, even though she had no idea who she was looking for.

"I mean, just the weirdness, ya know..."

"Where's yer boy, Boo?" Cindy asked, glancing around the room once more.

Max tilted her head in confusion. "I just told you, he..."

"Not Zack," Cindy interrupted. "Alec."

Max huffed in irritation and stepped around Cindy to get to her locker. She'd forgotten how angry she'd been at Alec the last time she'd seen him, but Cindy mentioning him brought it all back. She wasn't going to let herself think about the fact that he'd been right about Zack. She wasn't going to admit that if she'd listened to him, she might have been able to keep Logan and Zack both from being hurt, or that if she'd listened to Alec instead of yelling at him, she might have been able to keep Zack with her.

"He's not my 'boy,'" she answered hotly as she pulled her locker open. "And I don't know where he is."

"When's last time ya saw him?"

Even with all the irritation and anger she was feeling at that second, something in Cindy's tone of voice made Max drop the gloves she'd just picked up and turn back around. "Friday night, when he skipped out on the beer."

Cindy was worried, and Cindy didn't get worried over nothing. Max looked around JamPony once more, hoping to see the familiar dark blond hair and green eyes. But Alec wasn't there.

"He hasn't called Normal, either," Cindy added. "He's been asking everybody if we've seen him, and no one has. No one knows where he is. He's just not here."

"When'd you see him?" Max asked, her voice low. She was at a loss to explain the sudden sense of dread that was taking hold of her. A voice in the back of her mind was whispering to her, over and over, making her listen to it. She was putting one and one and one together, and she didn't like the three that kept turning up.

"Friday night, same as you. Sketchy, you see Alec since Friday?"

"No," Sketch answered with an abrupt shake of his head.

Max could read it in his eyes, that look that said he knew more than he was saying, but he didn't know if it was important, so he wasn't going to say anything. There was a healthy dose of fear in his eyes, too, and considering the last conversation he and Max had had about Alec, she couldn't really blame him. But she didn't have time to play with Sketchy right now. Her every instinct was screaming at her that something was wrong. That feeling of dread in the pit of her stomach was back with a vengeance, something was terribly wrong, and Sketchy might be the only one who knew exactly what that was.

"Spill!" she ordered.

"Steelheads!"

Max froze for a fraction of a second, long enough for Cindy to notice but no one else, and then she adopted a demeanor of pure malice. Her face hardened and her eyes narrowed, and before she realized she was moving she was stalking toward Sketchy, who was already backing away.

"What about Steelheads?" Max asked, every word dripping with venom.

"I didn't do anything!" Sketchy protested, his eyes wide in panic. He bumped the back of his leg on the bench between the rows of lockers, stumbling before catching himself and continuing to back away. "I don't know why they were there, Max, I swear!"

Sketchy jumped when his back hit the locker behind him, and he realized he had nowhere else to go. Max continued to move forward, not stopping until she was standing toe-to-toe with him, glaring up into his eyes.

"Why who was where?"

"At Crash," he stammered. "The Steelheads."

"There were Steelheads at Crash?"

Sketchy's head bobbed up and down frantically.

"When?"

"Friday night. After Alec left."

Max had known, had known from the very beginning, what Sketchy was going to say, but hearing him say it was a completely different story. The words hit her like a physical punch to the gut, stealing the air from her lungs, and she wondered if she looked as pale as she suddenly felt. From the confusion in Sketchy's eyes and the feeling of Cindy's hand gripping her arm, she guessed that she probably did.

"What's wrong?" Cindy asked.

"I swear, Max," Sketchy continued on. "I don't know why they were there. They were out front, looked like they were waiting for someone. There were three – the two that pulped me and another one. But everyone was already gone, so I just went out the back. And I didn't think about 'em again until just now."

Max pulled her arm away from Cindy and walked back toward the front door as quickly as she dared. She knew that she was walking right past the closest payphone, but she also knew that she couldn't use it. The phone call she needed to make had to be private.

She thought she heard O.C. calling out from behind her, and Normal yelling something about docking her pay, but she ignored them both. Her mind was swirling with thoughts of Steelheads, Transgenic organs, and a man who hadn't been seen in almost three days. One and one and one still equaled three, but now she couldn't deny it.

As soon as she was out of sight of JamPony, she blurred to the next nearest payphone, two blocks away. Her hands were shaking as she dialed, and she bounced her knee as she waited for the person on the other end to pick up. When he did, she didn't even wait for him to say hello.

"It's Alec!" she blurted into the telephone. "The missing Transgenic, the kidney, the... Logan, the Steelheads took Alec!"

It had taken Logan longer to calm Max down enough to tell him what she'd learned than it actually took her to say it. The Steelheads had taken Alec from Crash on Friday night – under her nose, she'd been sure to point out, on her watch – and Sketchy had seen them afterward. No one had seen Alec since then, and now those same Steelheads were selling a Transgenic kidney on the black market.

Logan had agreed with her conclusions with no hesitation, because there really were no other interpretations that would make as much sense. He had made Max promise to go no further than Crash without him before hanging up the phone, strapping on the newly-repaired exoskeleton, and getting in his car.

Max had been insistent about starting the search immediately, at the scene of the abduction. Logan wanted to think of it as the "alleged" abduction, because part of him was still hoping that Alec hadn't been taken, that he was holed up somewhere sleeping off a long weekend, that he was perfectly fine, safe, and all of his organs were where they belonged.

Even so, Logan was a realist, and he had to admit that Alec was in real trouble this time, arguably more trouble than he'd been in since Ames White had captured him. And Max was livid. Crimes against Transgenics upset her even when she didn't know the people involved. Now, the same group of people who had forced her brother to become a common criminal had taken Alec and were parting him out like a used car, selling pieces of him to the highest bidder.

Logan pushed his foot down on the accelerator and drove faster.