"Ready to get out of Whitehall?" Alec asked, returning from the mart. Max was already seated in the driver's seat, so he hadn't bothered with requesting to drive.

"Absolutely," she said, starting the engine and heading back toward the highway.

"You know we're a few hours away from passing Manticore home-base, right?"

Max moistened her lips and stared ahead with determination. "Yeah, I know."

He knew it would be a challenge for her but it would be something she'd force herself to do. Facing her fears – something soldiers did without hesitation and without words; Alec thought it suited her well. Her silence when it came to her Manticore days was bravery.

"Hey Max," he started.

"Yeah."

"Tell me about after you escaped."

Max looked over to him.

"I mean, how did you know what to do and who to talk to and how to survive? Where did you go?"

Max took a deep breath. "Well, I guess I didn't, really. Know any of that stuff. When we hopped the fence, Zack told us all we'd have to separate, you know, in order to survive. And though I would never give up what time I did have with them, Zack was right, at least when we were that age."

Alec smiled. Max talked about her unit mates like they were family, like they belonged together. It was nice to see that. He admired that about her. It was one of the reasons he stayed – because he'd have the chance to maybe have her depend on him like she had depended on her siblings. And maybe vice versa.

"But now I see that we'd be stronger together," she said, glancing furtively at Alec.

Alec stared into space. He wondered if she meant him. Zack and Brin, Tinga and Ben, they hadn't been around as long as him; plus, he'd gone on missions with her on numerous occasions and even spent time with her socially. He had joined the group of friends – made it into the inner circle with Original Cindy and Sketchy.

"So when I first got out, there was this woman, Hannah, who sort of helped me get out of enemy territory. She was pretty nice. She took me to this little cabin and tried to get me set up with a friend who could take me in for a bit. But I was fresh out of Manticore and I did what any soldier would do in enemy territory."

"You kept moving." Alec shifted in his seat to face her.

Max nodded.

Alec furrowed his brow. "How did you get by? You were just a girl – with a shaved head, no less."

Max shrugged. "Sometimes people turn away from things they don't want to see. They must have thought I was an orphan or something. I slept in alleys until my hair grew out a little. I stole from street vendors, a couple of times from a farm or from a convenience store. I scavenged. I squatted. Whatever I had to do."

It occurred to Alec how tough it must have been – not knowing where the next meal or shelter would come from, not knowing like he had when he started his missions, that the security of Manticore was behind him.

"When I was about fourteen, I was staying at a children's shelter and was sort of sold to a family."

"What!" Alec exclaimed. "You what?"

"Well, people needed help. Like a barter system. If I stayed with them and did chores and stuff, I could have regular meals and shelter."

"Indentured servitude? Really?"

"Yeah, and most of the time it wasn't that bad."

Alec felt some unknown anger rising up through his blood. "But sometimes it was that bad?"

"Nothing I couldn't handle," she said, with an almost forlorn look in her eyes. "And besides, I didn't really have another choice, you know? My other choice was Manticore and I sure as hell wasn't going back there."

Alec looked uncomfortable. The thought of Max having to choose the lesser of two evils was unnerving. It sounded like she'd experienced some rough things out there, too.

"When did you get out on your own?" he asked. "I mean a job and apartment and stuff?"

"Really, I met Kendra searching for a place to squat and we became roommates. You would have liked her a lot." Max flashed him a semi-suggestive smile. "A busty blonde who knew how to have fun."

Alec smiled; Max's smile was contagious. He couldn't help it. "And what makes you think a busty blonde is my type?" he asked, giving her a sweet and suggestive grin.

Max didn't answer.

"What about OC? When did you start hanging with her?"

"I met Original Cindy my first day at Jam Pony. She was even more raw than she is now."

"Now you two live together, though," Alec prodded.

"Yeah, the roommate shuffle. Kendra moved on and OC needed a place to stay." Max looked at the road, but she was somewhere else mentally. "She's my best friend."

"And what about Logan, Mr. Eyes Only himself? When'd you meet him?"

"I was robbing his apartment 'bout two years ago," Max said. "He had this beautiful statue of Bast."

"Ah, figures. The cat thing." Alec joined in Max's laughter.

Her smile faded. "He figured out pretty quickly that I was Manticore. Weird."

"So you went to steal Bast but ended up stealing his heart?" Alec laughed. He thought he might die based solely on the cheese factor of what he just said.

Max bit the inside of her cheek. "Yeah, I guess. He had shown me a framed mirror, and while I appraised it, he outed me for having a barcode."

"How did he know about Manticore?"

"I don't know. He's a journalist, so probably did mountains of research. I mean, government conspiracy would be the story of a lifetime."

Alec's face seemed to harden with concern. "Maybe he had a source ready to expose it all, and then the source went missing or something. Why else wouldn't he have done his hack sooner? He had to wait for more proof because his source fell through."

Max considered the information. "You sound like you're a couple of cards short of a deck."

Alec almost jumped out of his seat as something else occurred to him. "Someone like Sandeman."

"Yeah, I don't think so. Sandeman's gone, missing, not because he's in witness protection. And if he was, Manticore would have already gone to public trial long ago." Max moistened her lips. And besides, if Sandeman was Logan's informant, that means Logan's been lying to me for over two years.

Max figured a change of topic was in order. "What about you? Did you have a lot of solo missions?"

Alec knew he had touched on something a little too sensitive, since she had gone through the trouble of changing the subject. He sat back in his seat and looked out the window.

"Not until I was a little older," he started. "I had a couple of group missions and a few partnered with Biggs." He smiled in remembrance of some of the good times.

"I'm kind of surprised," she said. "Your memories of Manticore make it sound like a boarding school where the headmasters don't really know what's going on right under their noses."

"Well, it's more like the better 'soldiers' we were at base, the more missions we were assigned to, the longer we spent away from the compound."

We have something in common, Max thought, again, surprised. The taste of the outside world opened his eyes to the possibilities of life without Manticore. "So you agreed to be something you weren't?"

"Sort of. More like I agreed to be something I was designed to be in order to survive." Alec closed his eyes at the few, more unpleasant memories of Manticore. "I'm not that different from you, Max. You had to face the evil to survive. I had to be it."

Max's wide eyes found the side of Alec's face to be stoic as the currently emotionless soldier could manage. She wondered what else had done – besides having almost blown up the one person he'd ever been close to (and her father). The way he squeezed his eyes shut worried her.

"Can't be that bad," she said in an attempt to allow him to drop the subject.

Alec's eyes snapped open and trained on her. "You don't want to know," he said, fiery hazel-green eyes burning into her. "And if you did, I still couldn't tell you."

He shifted away from her in his seat, as if her questioning presence mad his stomach sour and not seeing her would somehow make the sensation disappear.

When you are your own worst critic, you never let yourself off the hook, Max thought. When you have a conscience, it's with you forever.

Max took a deep breath in preparation for the toughest question she thought she'd ever ask anyone. "Did you kill an innocent person?"

Alec tilted his head back and was instantly transported to that day – back under Colonel Parker's command, where as team leader, he had been asked to carry out an order.

Biggs had been interrogating the prisoner for over twenty-two hours with no results. Parker had ordered Biggs to eliminate the prisoner, but Biggs had reservations about taking his life; namely, he thought the guy was innocent.

Parker had shown Alec the evidence and documentation of the prisoner's deceit and criminal undertakings, and ordered the termination of the target. Alec knew that if Biggs didn't do it, he'd be sent to Psy-Ops, or worse, retired, so Alec made the executive decision when Biggs refused to make it himself.

After the task had been completed, Parker had commended him for his leadership and even promoted him within the ranks to Commanding Officer over a larger unit.

It wasn't until six months later during some routine file maintenance that he discovered the evidence he had been shown had been forged.

Alec shook himself out of the memory. He looked toward Max but couldn't bring himself to look her in the eyes. "I had to," he finally answered, matter-of-factly. He stared straightforward. He didn't want to talk about it.

Max could sense there was something deeper going on, but his Manticore mask was up and she knew from personal experience it meant 'don't push'. She speculated on what could have made him take the life of an innocent person. Manticore? Maybe his own life was on the line?

They sat in silence for a while. Max felt displaced by the conversation. She realized he must be stronger than she thought if he had to choose to do the horrible things Manticore asked of him, because the alternative was worse.

"If I didn't, they would have put me out of commission. Retired me." The way he said it felt like the Scotch-riddled, sarcastically-clad, Manticore-masked Alec she was used to seeing and hearing when situations got a little too close for his comfort.

It was dark when they reached Buffalo. Alec had an idea they were getting close to Gillette when Max started fidgeting against the steering wheel with one hand. It seemed as if she wasn't sure where to put her other hand. She didn't want it on the wheel or the gearshift and ended up balling it into a fist at the center console. She was chewing her lips and staring straightforward, eager not to show how nervous she really was.

Even though he knew she'd decline, he asked anyway. "Want me to drive?"

"No, I'm fine." Again, she refused to look anywhere except at the road. He could see the whites of her eyes pointed forward, with the street lamps reflecting off of their glassy surface. She laid into the gas pedal more and sped up to 90 MPH.

With trees and other cars and buildings flying by him so quickly, Alec still felt some comfort with sitting right next to Max. But she clearly did not feel the same, as she began weaving around other cars on the road, presumably in an attempt to get as far away from Manticore's facility as quickly as possible.

It was dark in the vehicle with the exception of the driver's panel and its various informative lights. The stereo wasn't even on and neither of them had felt like listening to the radio. In his opinion, it wouldn't be as good as the TV anyway.

He thought he caught a glimpse of a tear in her eye, and she wouldn't turn to face him while she was in this state, so he chanced losing a limb of his body and reached his hand out to hers. His hand hovered, palm up, at her wrist with slight hesitation, then swept along the underside of hers. He curled his fingers around her fist and squeezed gently, keeping his eyes forward as they sped through the night.

Neither transgenic said a word as they merged onto US 87 South, moving away from danger. Max opened her hand but did not remove it from his.