Red, white and black, with a soaring dove emblazoned across it's centre, the Freak Nation flag of the Transgenics soared high above Terminal City, a strong wind whipping at it, holding it out for all to see, even those who didn't want to look at it. Right now even Max didn't want to look at it. She had been as proud as any, even Joshua, the flags' creator, the night it was first raised, and most of the time she still was. But sometimes she hated the sight of it, wanted to burn it and run. Too often it was a bitter reminder of small victories at high costs.
The very night they had raised it had been a celebration of one of those small victories. An excursion into Seattle to meet two X-series Transgenics and bring them to Terminal City had gone horribly wrong, resulting in a siege at Jam Pony. Although the Transgenics had gotten through that crisis without it turning into a massacre - for which they surely would have been blamed - they had lost one of their own to one of White's federal goons in a sniper attack. That day had earned them their first ounce of respect among Ordinaries that day, sowed the first seeds of doubt in the monstrous reputation they'd been given up until that point. Even Normal had begun to entertain the idea that Transgenics were human after all, but Max would give it all back in a second for another chance to get Cece out alive.
Now their worst enemy - or at least, the worst to reveal himself so far, was on the run. Ames White's plans to turn the public view against Transgenics, his disgusting manipulation of Kelpy, and framing poor Joshua for Annie's murder, had all been revealed to the public at last. Stopping Kelpy had once again curried favour among Ordinaries, and further confusion had been caused by exposing White for the scumbag he was. But Joshua was still miserable having lost his first love, and Max couldn't help but feel a great pain over Kelpy's death, even though she never knew him, even though he had nearly killed Logan. He'd been a pitiable creature, and very little blame for what he had done could really lay with him. If anything, she blamed herself. The virus Manticore infected her with in an attempt to murder Logan had infected Kelpy when he morphed his genome to resemble Logan.
The public perception of Transgenics was apparently getting better and better, but Max wasn't so sure about that. The jeering crowds were getting larger every day, to the point where they could be sitting down reading poetry to each other and it would still sound like a full-scale riot. And the nights were no longer that little bit quieter. Chaos reigned 24/7 at the barriers around Terminal City. Fights had been breaking out over the past few days between the usual group of 'concerned citizens' and those who had begun advocating Transgenics' right to life. At one point the National Guard had almost been overrun by the warring factions. Six people had been killed, and a lot more injured. More deaths at the feet of Max and Manticore.
"You think it would count against us if we started beating the crap out of fence-jumpers? It might encourage them to stay away." Despite the bitter cold, all the worse given the fact that they were a month into the Spring, Alec didn't bother with a jacket, and seemed quite comfortable in no more than a thin long-sleeved t-shirt. Max remembered the night of the escape, falling through the ice, forced to remain hidden under the freezing water while guards patrolled the rushed around the spot she and Jondy had last been seen. Jondy had called out to her after she fell, and was about to come back for her, but Max had not answered, prompting her 'sister' to go on alone rather than risk re-capture by stopping to try and find her. Her X-5 genetic make-up had allowed her to walk away from that incident without even a chill, but lately Max felt cold all of the time, and knew it had nothing to do with the weather.
"How many so far?" In the weeks since the broadcast about White and Kelpy, a few people per week had begun climbing the tall chain-link fences surrounding Terminal City. They didn't seem to care at all about the countless lethal biological and even radiological toxins floating around the ruined remains of Sector Seven, which only Transgenic - and Familiars, Max reminded herself - were immune to, and although at first the National Guard had done a good job stopping most of them from reaching the top of the fences and getting in, that had changed lately.
In the beginning, those attempting to enter Terminal City had been just your average everyday nut jobs. Most seemed to think Transgenics the perfect weapon with which to combat a corrupt world order, but according to the news, there were some who actually believed Max and her kin were a gift from a higher power, sent to safely deliver them all from a coming apocalypse. Max's thoughts always strayed to the runes on her skin when she was reminded of that.
Lately the number of people trying to get in had increased, and everyone had started to worry a little when they realized that it was no longer just the crazies. The previous day a disturbance in the crowd had distracted the National Guard long enough for a man to get over the fence, and once over he had reached inside his jacket to remove a pipe bomb. Fortunately one Guardsmen had managed to notice this, and before Mole could blast the would-be bomber with his shotgun, had hit him with a rubber bullet in the shoulder. The bomb, instead of detonating the moment it fell from his hand, as such sensitive home-made crap has a tendency to do, had rolled harmlessly away.
Max had been equally pleased with the fact that Mole had been denied the opportunity to kill the attacker as she was that the attack itself had been a dismal failure. Despite the slowly shifting public perception, the Transgenics' rights of self-defence were unclear, only a slight improvement from non-existent, and a lot of public trust might have gone down the toilet had any of the news cameras captured Joe Nobody being blown away by the Lizard Man.
"Three so far, and it's not even noon yet. One made it over, but he was just another loony. Mole belted him in the face and left him close enough to the fence for the National Guard to come in and get him. It happened before I could stop him," he added in poorly-imitated innocence, seeing the annoyed look on her face. For a super-soldier, sometime spy and full-time philanderer, Alec was a lousy liar, almost completely unable to hide the childish grin that served him so well. "It's only a matter of time before one of them manages to do some damage," he continued, his voice more serious now. "We need to know how far we can go to defend ourselves from these psychos. No guarantee that takin' them alive will be an option next time there's a problem."
"Spoke to Clemente a little while ago. He said the mayor's making an announcement on the news in…about an hour," she told him, checking her watch. "Apparently he's giving the National Guard the O.K to use lethal force on anyone who gets inside."
"Well, that's great!" Alec snorted, echoing Max's own lack of faith in the idea. "So until they're over the fence, anything goes, and the weekend warriors will make a move once they're already on this side. Does he realize that if they're over the fence that probably means the Guard is looking in the wrong direction, too late to do a thing to help?" He paused a moment, uncomfortable, Max assumed, that he sounded as if he were blaming her. Lately Alec had become a lot more tactful in her presence. He made less jokes than usual, tried to keep her company whenever possible, and a couple of times Max had definitely felt his eyes on her. With any other guy, Max would have assumed a romantic interest, or, more accurately, a desire to get her into bed. With Alec, however, it felt as if she were on suicide watch. Joshua, too, had changed, frequently glancing in her direction and asking if she was okay. It certainly didn't help that she usually didn't hear the first time, drifting off as often as she had been.
"Baby-steps. We're lucky to be even making baby-steps, instead of just filling holes in the ground. We just gotta be patient." That was what she kept telling everyone, including herself, but Max wondered if any of them really hated all this waiting around for change to come to them any more than she did. Although Max very rarely needed to sleep, lately she found herself dozing off for several hours every night, where once it had been more like an hour every three nights, if that. She didn't know whether it was the boredom or the tension that made her want to leave the world every night, but she thought that if she were to forego nightly rest she might feel much better. Max's dreams of late had been plagued with the dead, friends and people Max known closely enough to consider family.
Every night Brin's burnt corpse, still aflame from the charges Max and Zack had planted in Manticore's DNA lab while Max left Brin handcuffed to a pipe, grabbed Max from behind and smothered her in flames.
Every night Tinga dropped a naked Max into a massive vat of chemical-filled water, where she found herself suddenly strapped down with IV's in her arms and back and the tube down her throat choking her. Unable to scream for help, she tried and failed to reach out to Tinga, who looked on passively, dead eyes seeming to look right through her.
Every night Ben, with his broken body and Alec's face, lay in the woods in which she had abandoned his corpse for Lydecker to reclaim, screaming up at her that she had betrayed him, kept him from the Blue Lady and murdered him. Max stood frozen, unable to run, unable to look away or speak, to beg his forgiveness.
Biggs, barely recognisable from the brutal beating, hung upside down from a light pole over a bonfire, chuckling unconcernedly, wondering aloud what Lola would say if she could see him now.
Lydecker stood over her, his face a cruel sneering mask as she held Eva in her arms.
Kelpy/Logan, pale except for the ugly red marks on his face, gasped his last tortured breath.
Zack turned the gun not on himself but on her.
"Hey, you still here?" Jolted back to Terminal City by Alec's hand on her shoulder, Max felt exhausted all of a sudden exhausted again. Shrugging his hand away, she was about to ask if she could just be left alone for a while when Alec suddenly stiffened. "Here comes number two for the day."
She followed his gaze to where a grubby little man was dropping from the fence less than fifty feet away. Max focused her vision on his face as he turned towards them, and saw just another harmless nut, excitement slapped all over his filthy features. Alec seemed to have come to the same conclusion, and they slowly made their way towards him as he began rushing in their direction.
Mole's distressed cry was the first warning. Only now did Max and Alec realize how this man had gotten over the fence. A pair of Guardsmen were breaking up a small group who been fighting near their position, anxious to put a stop to it before a full-scale riot broke out. As the brawlers were pulled apart, the Guardsmen were taken aback by the smug expressions on their faces, which Max noticed too despite being so far away. The second warning was the smell of nitrate, as by now the man who had scrambled over the fence had come much closer in the brief time it had taken Max and Alec to realize there was a problem.
Before Max could react, her feet were kicked out from under her, and she found herself being tossed backwards. Before she had even hit the ground, Alec had drawn a highly polished M1911 from the waistband of his jeans. Max was vaguely aware of Mole swearing loudly from somewhere behind her, apparently unable to get a clear shot with Alec in the way.
Despite her previous concern at the thought of pissing off the few people who had come to appreciate that Transgenic's had a right to live almost as much as the rest of them, during the instant between the initial flare and the actual explosion, Max had time to wonder angrily why Alec had not aimed higher than chest level and scrambled the bomber's brains. By some inexplicable fluke, it appeared that the single bullet had passed straight through, it's course unaltered despite the presence of so much bone and muscle in the man's chest, and ignited the fertilizer bomb in his backpack.
Max was trying to scramble to her feet when it blew. Flung like a rag doll by the force of the explosion, Alec crashed into her. The wind knocked out of her, everything went briefly white as she felt her head pound against the concrete, and a wrenching sound followed briefly by a pop and the pain told her she'd dislocated her shoulder in the awkward impact.
Before the dull throbbing in her head became too much, her eyes darted around her for Alec, who had rolled past her after the collision. His eyes were closed, his handsome face covered in blood. Before she had a chance to notice whether or not he was breathing, Max lost the struggle to stay conscious, and a new tormentor joined the others in her dreams.