AN: The game mentioned further in this chapter is 'Seek and Destroy', which Max and her fellow unit were shown to 'play' through flashbacks in the episode Pollo Loco. For those who don't remember, the objective of the game was to hunt down their prey through the forest on the outskirts of Manticore. The target being an ordinary convict Lydecker had offered freedom to if he made it to the perimiter. What Lydecker hadn't anticipated was the savage and insane way the X5 children tore apart the man after they caught him.


Locura

Chapter 2

1 January, 2022

Terminal City greeted the new year with quiet and uneventful ease. The first sun of 2022 crept up and over the sleeping forms of Max and Alec as they lay stretched out on the tallest rooftop their toxic sanctuary had to offer.

Below them, the silent streets seemed serene and almost beautiful in a sad post-toxic-spill kind of way. By the winter's early morning light, as the little transgenic nation slept, one could almost forget there were creatures half-human and maybe less than half, living within the confinements of it's high security fence, and on the brink of war with the entire human race…

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"God damn it! That interfering little X5 bitch is gonna be tastin' the pointed end of a lead bullet when I find her!"

Mole paced the floor inside TC's headquarters with what was most likely a scowl on his reptilian face, and an ever-dependable cigar dangling out of his mouth.

"What's Max done to get your knickers in a twist now Mole?" Dix laughed as the lizard man shot him a filthy look before exchanging his restless pace for a seat on the couch, where he proceeded to clean his shotgun. For what was probably already the second time that morning.

"That X5 wench has stuffed up my inventory, that's what she'd done! I had a nice little list composed of weapons I was sendin' Alec out for, and she has to go stickin' her nose in where it doesn't belong. Tellin' me we don't need them!"

"Max thinks arming ourselves will only give the ordinaries reason to fear us more."

Luke crossed the room to the car engine he'd salvaged earlier in the week and continued to harvest it for useful parts, as he studiously avoided looking in his hot headed friend's direction.

Mole stared at him for a moment and rolled his eyes. "Yeah well, Max wouldn't know shit from clay."

Luke shrugged. All the guns and ammo in the world wouldn't help them if the US Army took them out with a few nicely positioned missiles from above. But he wasn't about to try and point that out.

"What right does she have to come in here and take over the show anyways?" Mole glared at his rifle as if it knew the answer and just wasn't telling him.. "She's a god-damned rogue."

"Hey, you raised your hand too when she was calling for us to unite." Dix took a chance with the remark and tried not to flinch when the weaponry expert started towards him with the threatening stance of a hissing cobra ready to strike.

"Yeah well, that don't make her boss. I'm just waitin' for her to make one wrong move, and then…" Mole paused, wondering if he'd said too much. When the fire of anger was stoked within him even he had to admit he could take things too far.

"And then what Mole?" Match stood in the door way, arms folded together and a 'take no shit' attitude in her stance. "Go on, tell me - my curiosity's all aroused now."

Mole turned away from Dix and frowned at the red haired girl, though he made no move towards her. For a moment he held her glare with his own. A silent war of wills raged between them until at last he snorted in disgust and looked away. "What the hell is it with you X5's sneakin' round and stickin' your nose in other people's business?"

Match shrugged and sauntered into the room, her attitude seemingly lax although her eyes still held their challenge. "Max is one of my own and I hear you mouthin' off threats about her. I call that my business. Besides, it sounded to me like you're talking treason Mole. I'd be careful if I were you 'cause if you force the X-series to stand against you and yours… well, we don't need to do the ordinaries a favour by driving ourselves to extinction."

"Hey, all I was sayin' is -" The transhuman started towards the X5 but she held up her hand, signalling him to stop.

"I heard what you said Mole. And I know what you were implying . And I'm telling you to drop it, okay?"

Match watched as the transhuman deliberated on whether to continue in his rant before at last giving a small nod and turning to his shotgun once more. She exhaled a small quiet breath. From what she knew of Mole, he'd given in too easily for her liking. She hated to think of what was cooking in that mind of his.

The tension in Terminal City was rising and it wouldn't be long before the situation came to a head. Match hated to admit it - even to herself, but maybe Mole had a point.

Their people were born and bred to be soldiers. Max's recollection of Manticore was different from their own, and she had to realise that they needed the order and discipline Manticore had provided them. After all, they hadn't asked to have their home razed.

Despite what Match thought of it all, she was prepared to back up Max - hell, it's what Alec would do. But she didn't want to linger on the possibilities of what would happen if Max didn't begin to accept the inevitable: The transgenics wanted Manticore back.

To some degree anyway.

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As Max stirred beside Alec on the rooftop, he slowly woke from a sleep which had for once been free of restless dreams. By the slow sound of her breathing, Alec knew Max was yet to wake and so he soundlessly turned on his side and sat up a little, resting his weight on an arm. With a small smile he watched her face twitch with expressions brought by dreaming, and having the sudden desire to make connection with her, he reached out his hand to smooth back her hair.

At his touch, Max's lips curled slightly upwards and Alec found himself leaning in towards her. Before he was aware of his own actions, he softly touched his lips against her own, his eyes closed as he revelled in the feelings that stirred within him by the smallest contact.

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Max felt Alec's fingers brush against her hair and she tried to suppress the pleasant shiver that ran throughout her at his touch. Sensing him lean in towards her, she hoped her sudden pounding heart wouldn't cause him to halt in his descent. And as she felt his lips glide softly across her own, she felt herself began to meet his hesitancy with her steadily growing hunger.

But before she had a chance to greet his lips with her own, he pulled away suddenly. Not wanting to show her disappointment and betray the fact she even cared, Max continued to feign sleep while she fought the urge to sit up and attack him for being a dumbass.

As she lay wondering whether to berate him, she felt his arm slip gently - cautiously - around her, his hand resting lightly against the small of her back. At once anger dissolved and she snuggled into his embrace, smiling as she felt his arms tighten and draw her in closer until her head came to rest under his arm and her cheek brushed against his chest. She slid her free arm around him and a soft smile played upon her lips as she felt his heart began to pound within his chest.

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Match reached the final rung of the ladder and climbed onto the rooftop, to be confronted by the sight of Max and Alec lying in each other's arms a few metres away. The sight of them spread out on the roof top so peacefully, certainly didn't invoke images of the 'genetically engineered killing machines' of which the media loved to rant on about. Where were the TV helicopter's when you really wanted them to fly by?

Sighing heavily as she felt the weight of the world shift uncomfortably on her shoulders, Match stepped forward. "Hey guys, sorry to butt in when you're lookin' so cute, but you're gonna hafta get up."

With exasperation, Match waited as Max finally peeled herself away from Alec and jabbed him lightly in the ribs.

"Go away Match. I was just about to show Max my Don Juan techniques in seduction." Alec mumbled the words through a smile, and rolled away quickly when Max's jab turned into a hard 'playful' punch. He really should've anticipated that one.

"Look guys, we don't have all day." Match struggled to hold her patience in place, the feeling of doom spreading throughout her though she couldn't pin point the reason why. "By the way Mole is talkin'..."

Match didn't need to finish the sentence. Max had had enough disputes with the transhuman since the siege began, to know the guy's name tended to spell trouble. She jumped to her feet, instantly alert, though her eyes narrowed with irritation. "What's his issue now?"

"Well, as I'm sure you're already aware, Mole's not happy with the way things are being run." Match bit her lip, she probably could have worded that one better. Max wasn't too good at being told her leadership abilities were somewhat lacking.

"Yeah well, Mole's never happy. So what's new?" Although she tried to keep her voice light, there was no missing the challenging tone in Max's voice. She knew exactly where this conversation was going, and she didn't want to hear it. At all.

"Max, you have to listen to him. I know you felt the need to escape Manticore all those years ago, but our people are soldiers Max. We need..."

"Torture? Brainwashing? You need to keep up the training so you can go out and kill more efficiently?" Max hissed the words, anger already beginning to radiate off her in waves. "No Match. We don't need Terminal City to become another Manticore!"

Match took a calming breath and tried to keep her own temper in check. She knew Max would react this way. She just wished there was a way to make the pig-headed girl understand. Preferably before she learnt the lesson through hindsight.

"No one wants to bring back the evils of Manticore. But you have to realise that what were cell blocks to you, were barracks to us! You set us free, but we're still in prison Max. Trapped here with the enemy on all sides waiting for us to make a mistake... we're goin' stir crazy! We're used to being confined, but we're not used to being idle. We don't want the horrors of Manticore, but we need our training and discipline back."

"We? What, you're siding with Mole now?" Max stepped towards the red-head but was restrained by Alec as he suddenly placed a firm hand on her shoulder. Wrenching herself free of his grasp, she turned to pin him with a glare.

"Hey, just calm down a minute huh?" Alec held his hands up and beckoned for peace.

As Max opened her mouth to deliver a stinging retort, her words were lost and forgotten amid a sudden splay of gunfire from below. As if the world had suddenly become a movie played in slo-mo, the three figures on the roof froze. Max's mouth remained partially open, her eyebrows furrowed in a tight frown, Alec's hands still raised in entreat, and Match's arms that had been going to rest on her hips - now suspended in mid-movement. For just a few seconds, The Matrix was being filmed and directed on a rooftop of Terminal City.

And then the pulsing energy of life burst back into the scene, unfreezing the transgenics and leaving a ringing echo in their ears as they sought to take in the situation

"What the hell?" Max ran to the edge of the roof and found herself staring down at a grisly if somewhat surreal scene. Two seemingly lifeless bodies lay as crumpled heaps on the ground, while over them, five transgenics fought. At first it seemed they fought each other, but after only a moment of watching, Max felt a sickly familiar feeling wash through her. Seek and Destroy. A memory of the gruesome childhood training game briefly resurfaced. "No!"

Alec and Match recognised the behaviour of the transgenics as Max did, and in unison, the trio turned towards the ladder, shimmying down it as far as the second floor, when the released their holds one after the other and dropped the several remaining meters to the ground.

Recovering from the fall instantly, they ran to the small group of X5's, tearing them away from the bodies over which they fought like animals squabbling for scraps of meat. Alec took hold of a towering transgenic and hauled him away, throwing him into a wall and stalking towards him as the attacker leapt towards him immediately. Not wasting time, Alec tackled the X5, bringing him to the ground and landing atop of him, ploughing his fist powerfully into the soldier's temple and rendering him unconscious.

Rising to his feet at once, Alec turned and found himself ducking beneath the blow of another transgenic who Match had hurtled towards him. His attention was suddenly taken up in defending himself against a transgenic driven rabid with a deep seated, manic fury - one that Alec himself had not so long ago related to.

Moving in a tight circle with a transgenic similar in physique to Alec, Match warily waited for her opposition to make his move. Almost as if they were dancing, neither made a strike but rather continued to circle, trying to gauge each other's strength and weakness by the subtle, indescribable signals they sent to each other.

Finally, the sandy-haired male could no longer hold back the blood lust, and he lashed out a sudden foot, nearly - but not quite - catching Match off-guard. She grabbed his foot and twisted it, a tight-lipped smile haunting her lips as his body rolled in the air, momentary vertigo causing him to recover the fall badly, his sensory overload working against him in his crazed desire to rip her open. Wasting no time, Match leapt forward, using every scrap of her strength and training to try and take out a transgenic who had regressed into the darkest part of his being.

Max threw a fist at one transgenic, striking his jaw, but he merely snarled and at her again, forcing her to take the defensive. Behind her, she sensed another transgenic closing in and she warily cast about for her friends, seeing Match knocked to the ground and Alec trying to hold his own against a solid-built transgenic who seemed obsessed with slamming her lean friend against a wall as if he were playing a macabre game of squash.

"Hey boys, if you back off now I promise you I'll go easy on you…" Max's voice trailed off, she knew the look in the eyes of the three who were closing in on her now. Black, empty, void of reasoning. They weren't seeing their leader before them, they were seeing their prey. Right now, these men weren't merely back in Manticore, they were back in the most raw, primal part of their genetic make up. With their nostrils all but twitching with the scent of blood from the men they'd already slain, right now they knew of only one thing: To seek, and then destroy.

Moving with them as they circled her, Max found herself facing the direction where Alec fought the Goliath. Only now, the giant was stalking towards her, his nuisance disposed of. Feeling a chill of panic run through her, Max saw Alec sprawled amid a pile of trash on the ground.

"Look, you're not in Manticore anymore! You're free of that place!" Desperation etched into Max's voice. These men had half a lifetime more training than her, and crazed animal-like mentalities to go with them. She'd already experienced the strength of a regressed X5. Against one, her chances were slim. But against four?

Shrugging, Max turned to the largest, the one who had taken out Alec. She threw herself at the hunkering giant, a fist flying out towards his throat, but only delivering a glancing blow as he ducked away, and then his friends leapt in, each wanting to draw first blood…

As she felt herself be driven into the concrete, Max briefly wondered why she'd chosen the most derelict and empty end of Terminal City to spend New Year, when a body came hurtling into the group of transgenics that now leaned in for the kill.

"Alec!" Her torn and bloodied comrade pulled Max to her feet and flashed her a quick grin and an almost casual, "Hey Max" before slamming a fist square into the face of goliath, an almost gloating expression passing over his chiselled features as he heard the smacking crunch of cartilage and bone. Before he had a chance to strike out once more, his attacker's body was engulfed by a long body-wrenching spasm before dropping the ground.

Stunned, Alec found himself standing before a woman holding a taser in hand. Grinning slightly, the newcomer stepped over the twitching body and struck out at the two remaining attackers. Both shuddered with spasms caused by the electrical currents, and dropped to the ground like their companion - leaving a sudden thick numb silence in their wake.

Surveying the bodies that now surrounded them, Alec wiped blood from a head wound that looked worse than it really was, and crouched over the still unmoving body of Match to check for vital signs. Max looked to their rescuer and uttered a wary "thanks."

The woman almost laughed as she shrugged it off. "Well I was hardly gonna stand around while the leader of Terminal City and her tight knit group of friends got their throats torn out by a pack of…" Unsure of how to end the sentence, the X5 female shrugged.

Catching Alec's look, Max turned away, not wanting to see an I told you so in his expression. She knew he would never be low enough to direct the words at her, but she was afraid she might read her own guilty thoughts reflecting off his eyes. But the sight her gaze fell upon was so much worse than anything she could ever see in Alec's hazel irises.

Locked now beneath her stare were the two bodies of the regressors' original victims. Taking in the sight of the downed men - their plain features and unkempt physiques, Max's stomach rolled sickeningly as the seriousness of their situation hit her in a wave of absolute dread. Stepping towards the bodies, she spoke in a numbed voice filled with disbelief. "Oh no, no - they're ordinaries."

Turning, Max found herself staring into the shocked face of Alec, the death sentence of their entire race seemingly suspended between them. Alec's mouth moved, a hoarse whisper escaping his lips. "Oh god Max - what do we do?"

She swallowed, or at least tried. But her throat was dryer than dirt, and no words of wisdom were forthcoming. Shaking her head, she crouched over the bodies, her eyes travelling over torn flesh, her hands reaching out to touch cooling skin. And then pulling away as if burnt when she felt beneath her fingertips on the body closest to her - a twitch.

"Oh god..." This time the words came out as a barely audible release as she moved her fingertips to the man's throat and felt an unmistakable pulse. "This one's still alive." Another release of air, and no reply from those behind her.

Turning away, she stared wild-eyed at Alec who helping a groaning Match to her feet. Louder now, "this one's still alive!"

Whether this fact was for better or worse, they had to move and get him to the infirmary. And then work out what the hell they were going to do once the families of these men sent the National Guard knocking.

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"It's the only way Max!"

"No!"

Within the headquarters of Terminal City, Mole and Max faced off in a heated argument over the fate of the wounded ordinary.

"Look! If we drop him off outside our gates, what the hell do you think the media will make of this? One ordinary near torn to pieces by transgenic monsters and another barely living - but alive enough to tell the tale. And tell them everything they need to know in order to storm in here right now and wipe every one of us out!"

The transhuman towered over Max, trying to get it though her head - they couldn't allow the ordinary to leave Terminal City. His testimony would bring the military down upon their freak nation in one crushing blow. Of that, he had no doubt. This was everything both White, and the majority of the world could have ever hoped for. And they'd brought it on themselves. She had brought it on them.

"What do you suggest we do Mole? Kill him? Stash their bodies in a building here somewhere and just let them rot? They were innocent men Mole. They deserve better than that. And if we let that man die we're..."

"Yeah yeah yeah, we're the monsters everyone says we are. Change the tune, I've heard that song already." Stepping up to Max so their faces were mere inches apart, Mole removed his cigar and raised his voice. "And I'm sick of the god damned lyrics! If they were so damned innocent, what the hell were the figwits doing in Terminal City to begin with huh?"

"Hey, hey!" Alec squeezed in between them, lightly yet forcefully shoving Mole back before turning to Max. "Look, you know I'm not advocating senseless murder Max. But we have to think this through. You know what this could mean for us."

Seeing the look of hunted desperation on Max's face, he closed the two steps between them and folded his arms around her. Feeling her slump wearily against him, he nuzzled his lips into her hair, as he ran his hands back and forth across her back in soothing strokes. "We're not going to kill anyone Max. We're not going to let him die. Perhaps Logan could help us, maybe he could..."

Alec's voice trailed off, not knowing exactly what Logan could do to help them out of this situation. The human side of him emphasised with Max's desire to let the ordinary go, but the Manticore-born soldier in him knew that it wasn't possible to do so. Grimly, he knew what he and Mole had to do. And he knew Max could never ever find out.

Pulling away, he soothed back her hair, concerned by the defeat in her eyes as if she too knew and the knowledge of this was eating at her slowly but surely from the inside out.

Alec cleared his throat and adopted an authoritive tone. "Match, the ordinary is in a stable condition in the infirmary right?"

The red head nodded, her eyes sharp and alert, already sensing that Alec was trying to stall an inevitable situation.

"Mole, the regressors are under guard?" He glanced to the transhuman who nodded and mumbled through his cigar, "Damn straight."

"Good." Turning his attention to the woman who had come to their aid, he realised no one had bothered so far to find out her name. Opening his mouth to ask, she beat him to it. "Call me Void. What would you like me to do?"

Pausing as he wondered what task he could assign her, he released Max and lightly cupped her chin, tilting her head towards him as he spoke. "Our fearless leader needs to rest. Would you mind escorting Max back to her place, Void? Chances are those were the only transgenics to turn all werewolf on us, but just in case, I don't think any of us should be travelling from A to B alone."

To Max he said, "it's been a long day. Just recharge your batteries a bit, okay?"

To his surprise, she nodded her head in agreement, showing Alec just how weary she really was to be taking orders not only from someone else, but from him no less. Turning his attention back to Void, he gave her a quick smile of thanks.

Returning his smile, and knowing he was merely trying to politely get rid of her, Void stepped up beside them. "Come on then... Max."

Looking up at Alec and then Mole, the fiery heat returned to Max's eyes once more. "If anything happens to that ordinary while I'm sleeping, you're both getting your asses kicked. Hear me?"

With a cocky grin, Alec shoved her playfully towards the door. "Max - I couldn't miss your voice if I was wearing ear-muffs with a custom-built anti-nag guard."

Turning to swipe him across the head, Alec caught her hand and held it for a moment, a genuine smile reaching his eyes at the contact. "Don't even start beatin' on me Max. The state you're in right now, even Sketch could kick your ass."

Before she had the chance to reply, he'd shoved her out of the door, waiting for Void to shut it behind them before he turned back to Match and Mole and stated in a low, serious voice.

"Alright. Now we figure out how to dig ourselves out of the hole those regressors dropped us in."

TBC….