Chapter Ten

It was amazing to Max how much of a difference twenty-four hours could make.

The next morning dawned bright and sunny, a welcome change from the grey and rainy mornings that were so common in Seattle in early autumn. She and Logan had started taking turns sitting with Alec the day before, and he'd even recovered enough to realize that O.C. was just Cindy and not anyone that he needed to be afraid of. The different shifts gave them all a chance to go home for a while, shower and eat. And because Logan had offered to take the night watch, just in case Alec got confused again, Max had even been able to sleep in her own bed.

Well, she would have slept in her own bed, if she'd actually stayed home.

But she'd had a job to do that night, and she couldn't help but smile as she remembered it. Oh, she'd gone above and beyond on this particular job, and she knew that. The shame was that no one else would ever know she'd done it. It had been part justice, part duty, part protectiveness... but mostly it was just revenge. And she'd gotten it. She wondered if she'd ever feel guilty about it, but she really doubted it. She'd owed that Steelhead bitch, and even though she knew they'd never be even, it had made her feel better.

The fact that Lux, whose name Max now knew, felt a whole lot worse made Max feel a whole lot better than it should have.

The best part of the past twenty-four hours was how much Alec had changed.

His fever was almost completely gone. It was still hovering around one-oh-three – not enough to make him seriously ill but enough to keep him from forgetting that he had one – and Sam said it would probably stay there for a few more days. The antibiotics had been holding the infection at bay until his stem cells could start kicking in, which they'd done just as soon as there was enough of them to make a difference. His remaining kidney was starting to recover, as the stress being put on it by everything else that was wrong started to fade. His blood was replacing itself almost as quickly as it was designed to, so both his blood volume and his blood pressure were back up.

He'd be weak and shaky for a few days, which was a long recovery time for a Transgenic, but Max was grateful for it all the same. If he'd been anyone but a Transgenic, she'd have been getting dressed for his funeral instead of thinking about his recovery time.

But the absolute best part was that his body wasn't the only part of him that was returning to normal. The delusions, hallucinations and confusion that the high fever had brought on were already gone. And though he was still a bit uncertain and jumpy at times, he wasn't afraid of them anymore.

He was turning back into the Alec she knew, right in front of her eyes.

When she walked into his room, he was leaning against the raised top of his bed talking to Logan. He looked up at her and smiled.

"Maxie!" he said. His voice was still weaker and shakier than she wanted it to be, but like everything else, she knew that in time it would be back to normal. "Please tell me you brought me a burger. I'm starving."

Max couldn't help the laugh. She'd spent so much of the past two days worrying that Alec wouldn't survive to annoy the hell out of her, and she was going to enjoy it.

At least for a while.

"Nope," she said. She crossed the room and sat down on the edge of his bed, opposite where Logan sat in a chair on the other side. "You're NPO until further notice."

"Oh, come on!" he whined. Max saw from the corner of her eye that Logan was grinning, too. "Starving, Max. Why can't I eat?"

"Because you can't eat before surgery," she said good-naturedly.

She'd learned to spot the cues, to head off what they'd started referring to as his "episodes" before they really got going, and she saw it immediately. His whole body went stiff, his eyes widened, and his breathing sped up.

"What surgery?" he asked.

"Kidney surgery," Max said, then shook her head. Blunt and tactless, as ever. And it sent Alec even closer to the edge. He turned toward Logan the way he'd done so many times in the past twenty-four hours.

"It's okay," Logan reassured him. "It's a real surgeon, a friend of Sam's."

"But why do I... I've only got one left!"

He didn't know, and Max could have smacked herself for that, because he really should have known. Someone should have told him long before then.

"They're not taking the other one out," Logan said. "They're putting yours back in."

"They have it?" Logan nodded. "How'd they get it? Eddy..." Alec paused, and both Max and Logan knew not to interrupt him.

There were some things that Max thought shouldn't bother Alec as much as they did, and saying Eddy's name was one of those things. She'd mentioned it to Logan, and he'd told her that Alec needed to deal with things in his own way, and that telling him he shouldn't be bothered by Eddy's name would only make things worse. So she hadn't said anything to Alec, but she had started paying more attention to the things that bothered him the most, so she could avoid pressuring him about them.

That's how she knew that he hadn't mentioned Lux at all since he'd mistaken Cindy for her.

"He told me they sold it."

"They did," Max said.

Alec's eyebrows shot up.

"They just didn't know who they sold it to," she continued with a nod in Logan's direction.

Alec blinked in confusion and turned back to Logan again, but he didn't look as scared as he had a few seconds before. He was already starting to settle back against his pillows again.

"So," she said, "you've got surgery in a couple hours. So you can't eat."

Alec nodded slowly, then looked down and started playing at the edge of his blanket.

"Hey, Alec," Logan said. "Will you be all right for a few minutes? I need Max's help with something."

Another nod.

"I'll be right back."

Logan motioned for Max to follow him outside, so she stood up. "Back in a few," she said to Alec as she turned and walked into the hallway.

Logan spun around toward her the second the door closed behind them.

"He didn't know?" Logan was obviously as upset about that fact as she was, because his voice had a hard edge to it.

"Yeah, I know," she said. "I can't believe no one told him that his kidney was..."

"No, not that," Logan interrupted. "No one talked to him about the surgery? At all?"

Max pulled back slightly. "I just did."

"Yes, but did you ask him?"

Max was really confused about where the conversation was going. "Ask him what? He needs his kidney back, so he's going to..."

"No!" Max took an involuntary step back, and Logan took a deep breath. "Four days ago, someone tied him to a table and cut out a major organ with no real sedatives or pain management, most definitely without his consent, and while he was awake. And no one thought that maybe, just maybe, he might have a little problem with surgery?"

She hadn't thought of it like that.

"Is he going to die without that kidney?" he asked. "Or get sicker? Does he absolutely need it to live?"

She shook her head slowly.

"Then it's his choice."

"But he won't be..."

"No, he won't be perfect," Logan said. "He might not function at one hundred percent efficiency. But he can live without it. People all over the world do it every day."

"It's not about him just being alive, Logan. It's about him being who he is. And who he is will change if he's not whole."

"It's a kidney, Max, not his soul. Not his personality. It's not him. And you can't order him to do this. It has got to be his decision. The last thing he needs right now is anyone, no matter how well-intentioned they might be, forcing him to do anything he doesn't want to do."

Sometimes, Max really hated it when Logan was right.

Alec hadn't moved since they'd been gone – he was still sitting up on his bed, pulling at the strings along the edge of his blanket.

Logan and Max crossed the room again, but this time it was Logan who settled himself on the edge of the bed, and Max sat in the chair. He didn't look up at them.

"Alec."

He looked up at Logan slowly, and Max was surprised by how bloodshot his eyes were. They hadn't been like that a few minutes before, had they?

"We're gonna try this again."

"Try what?" Alec asked.

"Eddy did sell your kidney after he removed it, but he sold it locally and to one of my contacts. So I had it, and I gave it to Sam. He's got a surgeon friend that is willing to come over later this morning and put it back in."

Alec's eyes lowered again.

"If you want him to."

His head shot back up. "What?"

"I said he'll put it back in if you want him to," Logan repeated.

"If I..." His voice trailed off, but not soon enough for Max to miss the confusion and uncertainty in it. When he turned to look at her, she read the same in his expression.

"I'm not gonna lie, Alec," she said. "I want you to do it. I think you'll feel better if ya do. But it's nothing you can't live without, so..." She took a deep breath. "It's up to you."

"Really?" he asked.

"Really," she said.

"It's your choice," Logan put in. "What you say goes."

Max could see in Alec's eyes that this was something he hadn't been expecting, and in his shoes, she doubted she'd have felt any differently. The life of a Transgenic wasn't exactly an exercise in free will, after all. Making choices and decisions for himself was something that Alec was still getting used to, and this was no small decision. This wasn't about where to live or what to eat – this was him deciding on something that would affect him, and only him, for the rest of his life.

"If you say yes, he'll be here in a little over an hour," Max said. "And if you say no, he won't be here at all."

Alec looked up at them both through his eyelashes and smiled.

Alec was in surgery before noon.

Logan wondered if Sam's surgeon friend had ever performed a kidney transplant where the recipient was also the donor, but he dismissed the thought rather quickly as being pointless. He was almost positive that even asking would have been ridiculous.

Max was several feet away from the waiting area chairs that Logan was sitting in, at the end of the hallway, stalking back and forth in front of the closed doors that led to the emergency operating room Sam had set up. And she'd been doing nothing else for over an hour.

Logan turned his head back down the hallway just in time to see Matt Sung walking toward him.

"Matt." Logan jumped to his feet and walked forward to meet his friend and shake his hand. "Did you get that...?"

"All taken care of," Matt said. "You weren't kidding about there being a lot of blood and tissue evidence there. Our forensic guys have only started processing and they've already identified at least six different people."

"What about...?"

"Maybe there should have been seven," Matt said with a shrug. "I don't suppose it really matters, does it?"

"Thank you, Matt," Logan said, and he meant it sincerely.

"You're welcome."

"What about arrests?"

"Three," Matt answered.

"Wait, there were four of them," Logan said. "British Eddy..."

"We got him, and a couple of idiots called Bird and Tuck."

"And the girl?"

Matt shook his head. "She wasn't there when we arrested them. But the strangest thing, she walked into the station about two this morning and turned herself in. She hasn't been arrested yet, though, because she had to be taken for treatment of some fairly recent injuries. Someone really pounded on her."

Logan looked back over his shoulder at Max. He wondered if she'd had anything to do with that, and briefly considered asking her, but it really didn't matter. Max always seemed to have better luck with finding the "bad guys" than the police did, and she'd always had a knack for persuading people to do what she wanted them to do. And, Logan supposed, all things considered... maybe that was for the best.

"Between what we found in that funeral home and the file you sent over, we've got more than enough not only to hold them, but to convict them. They're done, Logan. For good."

Logan turned back around and smiled.

"That's all I needed to hear."

"How's your boy doing?" Matt asked.

Logan sighed. "Better. A lot better. He's in surgery right now, but once that's done, they expect him to make a full recovery. He'll be fine."

"That's good to hear," Matt said. "I don't know for sure, don't know if we'll ever know for sure, but I'd say judging by the amount of decomp we found in that basement... odds are he's one of the few who's survived. If not the only one."

Logan nodded. He'd thought of that, too. Of course, when he thought it, it was always followed by the knowledge of just how close they'd come to losing Alec, too.

"He's lucky," Matt said.

"No," Logan argued. "We are. If we hadn't found him when we did, if we'd lost him..."

The sound of the doors to the operating room opening interrupted him, and he spun around. Sam was standing there, a wide smile on his face.

"He's just finishing closing the incision," Sam announced. "He's amazed at how quickly Alec heals, though. I guess he's never had an incision start closing itself before he could get the sutures in before."

Logan almost laughed.

"Everything went perfectly," Sam continued. "The anesthesia worked like a dream. He's going to be just fine, and at this rate, I'll be sending him home with you before nightfall."

Logan felt the smile spread across his face and turned to look at Max, expecting to see one on her face, too. He didn't expect her to press her back against the wall, slide down it until she was sitting on the floor, and start shaking.

"Matt," he said without turning around. "I've got to..."

"Yeah, me too." Matt was already walking back down the hallway to leave. "I'll let you know if anything changes."

Logan walked over to where Max sat on the floor next to the doors, and crouched down in front of her.

"Max?"

She looked up at him with red-rimmed eyes. "He made it," she whispered.

"Yes," Logan said with a nod of his head. "He did."

Max sighed as she looked at the doors. "What do we do now?"

Logan smiled and wished again that he could just reach out and touch her, because they both needed the contact. "We help him get through the rest of it," he finally said. "Because I don't think it's over yet."

"How do we do that?"

"Follow his lead," he answered. "It's not going to happen overnight, but he's already getting better. I didn't really expect him to consent to the surgery."

"Whatever else Manticore did to us," Max said, "they made sure that we knew how to deal with with things like this."

"How?"

"Repression, disassociation, compartmentalization... we all know how to do it."

Logan shook his head and frowned. "That doesn't sound very healthy."

"Nothing healthy about it," Max agreed. "But it works. And when you're just trying to find a way to survive? That's all that really matters."

He recognized the grogginess that meant he was waking up from a drug-induced nap, and for a moment, he panicked.

"It's okay, Alec. The surgery went well, and you're just fine."

The sound of Logan's voice put him at ease immediately and he opened his eyes. Logan wasn't the only one in the room with him – Max and Cindy were both standing beside his bed, too. And so was Joshua.

"Joshua... how...?"

He started to push himself up in the bed, but Logan and Max stopped him easily.

"It's okay," Max said. "Nobody's here but us and Dr. Carr."

"Wanted to see annoying little brother," Joshua said.

Alec lowered his eyebrows and blinked in confusion. He had the feeling there was something he was missing, but he couldn't even start to figure it out.

"Alec better?" Joshua asked uncertainly. "Gonna be all good?"

Alec thought about that for a second before he answered. His side was sore, but the piercing, stabbing pain that he'd been feeling since Saturday was gone. It was just a dull throbbing ache now, just another healing wound well on its way to becoming just another forgotten memory. Everything else, from bruises to puncture wounds, was already healed, and the only drugs in his system were the ones he'd been given before surgery. He still felt groggy and light-headed, but Dr. Carr had told him that he'd feel that way for a few more days. Most of the infection was gone from his blood, but not all of it. Once it went away, and took the damned annoying fever with it, he'd feel fine.

"How ya feelin', baby?" Cindy asked.

He smiled up at her, and then at Joshua.

"I'm good, " he said. And he meant it.

"That's good," Max said. "Because you ever scare me like that again, I'll kick your ass."

He started to chuckle, but it turned into a moan rather quickly. "Oh, no laughing," he said. "Hurts."

"You can take it easy for a bit longer," Logan said. "They're kicking you out in a couple of hours, and then you'll be at my place for a few more days. But there's no reason why you can't sleep for a bit longer."

Alec nodded and closed his eyes. "Do I get some pants before I leave?"

He heard all four of them laughing. "I'll see if I can't find you some," Logan said.

He was drifting out, but he blinked his eyes open again. There was something that he needed to say to them, something that he'd been wanting to say for a while.

"Thank you."

His eyes stayed open just long enough for him to see their smiles, and then he was asleep again.