Today 'They' Won the Battle

Part 18

By Rhasa

Disclaimer: Not mine Belong to Eglee and Cameron. No money being made. No infringement intended.

Rating M - I am changing all ratings to M

Alec allowed himself to feel hopeful when he saw Mary enter his room. In the second or two it took for him to recognise her, a dozen scenarios played through his confused mind supplying potential reasons for her presence; the most appealing being that his fellow X5 was there to rescue him and that she had brought reinforcements. For a moment he allowed himself to breathe a sigh of relief. He knew despite the danger, despite the obvious risk, that Mole and Max wouldn't let him down. He knew that they would find some way to overpower White and get him out of there.

Alec had allowed himself to feel hopeful, for those first few seconds, which subsequently he realised was a mistake, as instead of bursting further into the room and rushing to assess his condition, Mary continued to hover in the doorway, looking as if she had all the time in the world.

Having always been a relatively quickly study of people, his current situation notwithstanding, Alec swallowed and said, "I'm guessing no cavalry? No getting' me out of here?"

"No," she replied, as she stepped further into the room and closed the door behind her.

Alec's head dropped back down to the concrete beneath him. "Don't tell me they got you too. How many more?" He had prayed that no one would get caught on the account of him.

"If you mean are there other transgenics here, then, there's only us."

A sigh escaped from Alec's lips, which was then followed by a hacking cough that caused so much pain that he saw stars. After the worst of the fit had subsided, he sighed. "Well, that's a relief," he said through clenched teeth before spitting blood. Quite frankly if Mary had been heading up a rescue team he doubted he would have had the strength to move to get out of there at the moment.

'They hurt you bad, didn't they?" she asked, as she walked behind him.

"Yeah, a little, I guess," he said in his usual nonchalant manner.

Alec looked up and saw her watching him from above. There was something about the way she was just standing there, looking down at him, that was unsettling. It made him feel like a bug under a microscope – the sensation causing a shiver to run down his spine. He admitted that he had never really known his ex-breeding partner all that well, but for the few encounters they had shared in the past, she had never really freaked him out like she was doing right now.

She continued to stare at him. "But they didn't kill you," she stated as she moved away from his head and started circling him slowly.

"No. Not yet," Alec winced as he tried moved his head to track her movements so as to get a better look at her. "I guess they're saving that for the after dinner show." Alec knew it was stupid to think differently – if he had been a betting man he would have guessed that his chances of White not killing him were about a thousand to one.

Mary continued to stare at the broken X5 in silence.

Alarm bells were now ringing in Alec's head. He knew it wasn't just the concussion he had probably sustained that was making him confused about just what was going on. Something wasn't right – and in a major way. He tried to form coherent thoughts about the reasons why Mary was here. At first he had thought that she too had been captured, but her demeanor did not reveal any obvious distress. She had walked through that door as if she had owned the place, and now it didn't exactly seem as if she was in any particular hurry. Suddenly Alec felt as in as much danger as if White himself was standing before him. "So, I guess whatever it is you're planning, we'd better get a move on because I think they're up to about the second course by now," he told her, keeping the tone light.

Still, Mary said nothing.

Her silence made him even more nervous, but he decided to take it for confusion and clarified. "I don't think it will be long to they come and kill me, so if you've got a plan on how to get out here then we'd better get on to it."

Mary said nothing.

"Not quite the response I was looking for," Alec murmured after a while.

And then, finally, Mary whispered, "I do have a plan."

Alec's heart sped up at her words – not in hope, but in fear. "Then let's hear it," he prompted nervously.

"I plan to kill you myself."

Alec didn't miss a beat. "Damn. I hate it when I'm right," he muttered to himself, then with some effort, turned to her. "Look, if this is about that whole child payment thing, I swear if I had known the kid was mine the cheque would have been in the mail."

Mary cocked her head to the side trying hard to figure something out. "Tell me something, do you find it an asset that Manticore gave you such a jovial personality?"

Jovial? What the hell was she on about? Alec wondered. Overcome with a new wave of tiredness, he rested his head back down once more and closed his eyes. "I guess I was designed to have a charisma that I could use to hopefully get me out of situations like this one."

"Strange," she replied, more to herself than to him. "I never saw the point of the common verbal usage and conversational classes."

"If I'm remembering correctly, you weren't much of a talker back at Manticore."

"I didn't see the need. I was trained for covert ops - not much of an opportunity to get into conversations with anyone. My mission usually surmounted to, get in, usually in darkness, claim the target and get out. Preferred method: garrote."

Alec looked up at her. "'Should I be glad that I don't see one of those around here? Or have you got some deep pockets that I don't know about."

"Don't worry, I promise it will be painless. Which is more than you'll get if White gets his hands on you."

Alec's brow wrinkled. "Is that why you're here? Killing me is in some weird way to save me from what White has in store for me?" Mary said nothing, so Alec continued. "I know we were taught to never leave a man behind in enemy hands if we could help it, but I gotta tell you, I'd rather we exhaust all other options first."

"You think there are other options?"

Alec twisted his body around so he could face her better. Ignoring the pain and discomfort his movements caused him, he pinned her with a glare and told her, "There are always other options."

Mary shook her head. "Not this time. This is the only way," she said as she knelt down next to him.

Alec looked into her eyes and was somewhat surprised of what he saw there. He'd half expected to see a coldness or an emptiness there. As both Max and he knew well, not all X5s were perfect. A significant proportion had certain flaws in their psychology that virtually turned them into anything from harmless nutters and hence useless soldiers, right through to dangerous sociopaths and true menaces to society. He, himself, had been on the receiving end of experiments to determine whether those flaws were due to nature or nurture. Alec tried hard to suppress the memories of his time in psyops were scientists had tried in vain to discover if his own identical twin had gone off the deep end as a result of a chromosomal abnormality or merely as the result of his upbringing. Alec had half expected to see a coldness in Mary's eyes that would explain that she too was suffering from some delusions, but instead all he saw was determination – she was determined to kill him, of that he was certain. May as well join the club. "If it's all the same to you, I think I'd rather take my chances with White. I don't want you to spare me from him pain. I don't want you to make this easy for him-"

Mary frowned. "You think that I'm doing this as some kind of noble gesture to save you from the pain you'd feel at the hands of White? That's not why I'm doing this."

Alec was confused. Wasn't she here to put him out of his misery? If not, what else was going on? "Then you got to tell me. You got to at least tell me why."

"It's the only way," she repeated again.

"Yeah, I got that part already," he said clearly annoyed. "But the only way to what?"

"The only way to right a wrong!" She yelled.

"A wrong what? What 'wrong' are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about 'us'."

"You mean 'you' and 'me' us?"

"No! Us. X5s. Transgenics. Manticore. All of us. We were never meant to be."

Alec stared in disbelief. Mary thought that transgencis were abnormalities. Well, he couldn't argue with that. But he felt that there was more to it than that. All he could say was, "I don't understand," in the hope that she would tell him more, and in the hope that he could buy himself some more time.

"That's the problem – you never understood. She never understood."

"She?"

"Max. Your so called leader. She never understood what it was like for us – the ones who were left behind. I knew that as soon as I came to Terminal City. It wasn't at all like Manticore."

"That was the whole idea."

"Why do you assume that all X5s or transgenics would feel the same way as you do?"

Alec was quick to answer "I don't!"

"Yes you do. All of those in command at Terminal City did. I went there because I thought it was a chance to start over-"

"It was – I mean it is-"

"No it wasn't. It wasn't at all like – home."

"Like Manticore?"

"Yes. You took away my home when you burned it to the ground."

Did she really believe that? Alec had thought that after all the time had passed since the destruction of Manticore that everyone knew it was Renfro and those in charge who had given the order to torch the place.

"Mary, Manticore wasn't home. They were using you – you weren't free-"

"My designation is X5– 1968572; and it may not have been home to you, but it was home to me. I was born a soldier and I will die a soldier."

"Listen I used to think the way you do, but I found out the truth-"

"The truth? The truth is there is no place for us in the real world now. You and your friends saw to that! At least at Manticore we knew where we stood. They accepted us for what we were. We served a purpose. And if we did what was expected of us then we were valued. There was humor in being a soldier, in serving Manticore. Tell me, where is that honour now? The ordinaries want to kill us. You think Manticore was some kind of prison? Well, Terminal City is worse. You took away the only place where we belonged. We are not meant for this world – for a world without Manticore."

Alec couldn't quite believe what he was hearing. A sudden understanding dawned on him – one that literally made his blood run cold. "You told White about the tunnels didn't you?"

"Yes."

"You're with them – White's cultists – now, aren't you?"

"Yes."

"Why?" he asked.

"My alliance with the cultists is a means to an end."

Alec shook his head sadly.

"Don't worry. I have plans for them too," she told him somewhat proudly. "They think I have turned. In fact, they think I'm insane, some problems with my genetics, experiencing some psychosis that has made me turn against my own kind. I know they'll only keep me alive long enough to see them get White's son back and to destroy all those in Terminal City, but they don't know that I have a way of destroying them all as well. Then everything will be right again."

"Mary, there are other ways. You say there is no place for us, no place for you, in the world anymore. But we can make a place. We have the freedom to choose a place for ourselves now. We can choose something other than being a soldier if we want. We can choose to have a family. You had Jed-"

"Some of us don't want those types of families."

"If I had known, I would have helped you. You wouldn't have had to raise him on your own."

"If your fearless leader hadn't burnt down Manticore, I would not have had to raise him at all. They would have taken the fertilised embryo for implantation into a surrogate. They couldn't afford to keep us out of the field for the amount of time it would have taken to go to full term."

"You would've happily given up your child?" Alec asked.

"Oh please, I never saw his conception as creating a child, and judging from your reaction to when I first showed him to you, neither did you."

"That doesn't change the fact that we 'did' create a child together."

"If that's the way you want to look at it."

"How else would you look at it?"

"I gave birth in the dark, in a dirty, rat-infested alley, on my own. I had no idea what was happening. It's not like our sex ed classes ever covered the topic. To use an old expression, having a child was never something I 'signed up for'. I never wanted it. I wasn't prepared. I lost a lot of blood during the delivery due to some complications. It left me weak. Too weak to move. As a soldier, I had never felt more vulnerable in my entire life. For the first three days after, I survived by eating those rats, drinking the filthy water that ran through the gutters, while nursing him only to save myself from having to listen to his cries. Can't say that I ever experienced the joy of 'motherhood' that the ordinaries so often boast about. The truth is the last thing on my mind when you entered my room on those nights so long ago was a baby. You look at me as if I was a monster for abandoning him, and yet I doubt you judge yourself. As I recall you were a rather 'willing' participant for the breeding program. For you to sit there and judge me and my motives – well, you should take a look at yourself, a look at your role in all this. Did you ever consider the so-called children you were creating as part of the program? What their lives would be like? If they would survive. If they would be healthy or suffer from genetic abnormalities? Did you ever stop to wonder if they would be experimented on? If they would have to endure the same tests and procedures that we had to endure as children?"

"No. I guess I didn't think about being a father. But it's different for guys - that seems to be one of the things I've learnt since I've lived outside of Manticore."

"And just who fed you that line of B.S? I hate to burst your little bubble but not all females are cut out to be mothers."

"I guess not."

"I don't expect you to truly understand my reasons for doing what I'm about to do. They've brainwashed you."

"It's called free will."

"You talk about freedom, and you talk about choice. Well, I'll give you a choice. Broken neck or strangulation? I can place just enough pressure on your windpipe to make you gradually lose consciousness. It'll be like falling asleep."

"Any chance of taking door number three?"

"It's the only way. The transgenics, cultists and the Familiars must be destroyed."

"Then why don't you let us fight it out amongst ourselves then, huh?"

"Goodbye, X5-494," she said as she placed hooked his neck in the crook of her right elbow, placed her left palm on his right cheek, and began to steadily tighten her grip.

"No," he spluttered as he closed his eyes tights and tried to suck in deep breathes of air. "Not like this." He brought his hands up to grasp on to her right forearm, but knew straight away that he didn't have the strength to loosen her grip. By reflex his legs kicked out from underneath him, trying to gain some leverage to lift his body off the ground, but his broken body failed to afford him any concessions, and he continued to struggle against her hold on him as colours began to flash before his eyes.

A pounding flooded his ears, and he thought he heard a sharp snap of what must have been a vertebrae breaking before a darkness began to sweep over him. In the millisecond it took for a new warmth to spread throughout his body he sensed his approaching death. "Not like this," he thought to himself again. He opened his eyes and looked up into the orbs that were staring down at him. His last thought as he began to drown in their depths, was that they were of the same rich colour of the one and only woman he would ever truly love.

To be continued………

Author's Notes:

Okay – Mary does not equal nutter. I mean there is nothing all that wrong with her. Okay she didn't/doesn't want to be a mom – I can certainly relate to that sometimes especially when I am trying to finish writing a chapter and my kids won't let me go literally two minutes on the computer without A) demanding a drink – that they can get perfectly themselves; B) dobbing on each other for some travisty of justice – such as sticking their tongue out or swearing (saying the word 'damn') or C) torturing our dogs just for the sake of it sigh (Note: I wouldn't give my kids up for anything!). Anyway, who is to say that what Mary belives i.e. everything Manticore is wrong and what the others believe i.e. freedom is right? What may be 'freeing' for one person, is not necessarily the same for the others. I can't quite believe that everyone was thrilled when Manticore was burnt down and they no longer had a home – I mean Ben taught us that. That's what I was hoping to capture with Mary.

On another note I have actually finished three more chapters after this – no joke – actually finished them and will be posting really shortly. So I'd really, really, really enjoy a review. Even if you want to tell me my Mary sucked. That's okay.

As to what happens to Alec – well you'll just have to read on to find out. I think a few of you will definitely be surprised.