Dean poured some water onto the now pink- and red-stained tee and dabbed at the neatly sutured wound, then carefully smeared it at her neck, where the wisps of hair had fallen out of her braid and had been blood-stuck to it.

And she had let him clean her. There was something about his nearness that comforted her. Of course, she thought it was probably his Alec-ness that was bittersweetly calming, but in truth, it was the fact that someone was taking care of her, disallowing her distraction – which was also a blessing and a curse.

The last time someone had taken care of her, it was years ago – back before the virus had been released upon the world. Zack had been in Idaho for over two years before his memory floated back into his mind and he remembered who he was, and why he existed. He had come back to Seattle to find Max and find the remaining members of their old unit, and maybe do some damage to the Familiars while he was at it.

She and Zack had gone on a reconnaissance mission at the harbor to find the blueprints to any of their old holding cells. While Zack was onboard one of White's vessels, Max was supposed to go to the Harbormaster's office and pull the checkpoint logs to find out where the Familiars had been. Once she found the logs, that information might have led them to the holding cells, or at least given them some idea as to what was in store for the transgenics. They would then meet back up in the woods at a specific longitude and latitude and bring their findings back to Logan. Armed with that information, the three of them could warn the others and counter White's plans by letting White 'find' the other transgenics and intercept them before he could apprehend them. It was a good plan.

Once she was inside, though, it was as if the whole team of Familiars had known what they were up to, because they had tased her, which had paralyzed her, cut her arms and legs several times as they attempted to interrogate her, emptied a syringe full of chemicals into her, and dumped her into the water.

The whole time, she could think only that Zack wouldn't have known to look for her because they were supposed to meet back up at the rendezvous point in the woods.

As she had sunk into the water, paralyzed, she thought it would be just a few minutes before she drowned, and how stupid a way it was to die – so normal, so human.

In what seemed to be a truly miraculous moment, someone swam towards her underwater, wrapped his arm around her torso, and dragged her against the current for about five minutes, until they were both under the docks on the opposite end of the harbor. When she was finally above water, she had expected to see Zack, but it was Alec instead. She'd never been so happy to see him, but she still felt paralyzed.

Alec had carried her to the nearest unoccupied house, broke in with the force of his leg muscles, and run a warm bath for her. He had set her in it and watched her eyes as feeling and movement returned to her body. He had not been aware of the recon mission, nor the rendezvous point, both facts which had made her question why he had rescued her, and how he had known where she was.

Dean knew the look she was giving; he'd seen this look plenty of times. Hell, he was certain he looked this way sometimes. Tired, stuck in a memory of something he couldn't control, helpless to it all. She seemed paralyzed with the memory.

But as he swathed her skin with the soft cotton, taking off the dried, streaked blood, she allowed the feeling of it to wash over her, to let herself imagine it was Alec here, silently caring for her – because no words needed to be said – and that this act of bathing her was his forgiveness.

As deeply as she wanted it, though, she shamed herself for thinking it. Why would Alec forgive her? And more importantly: how?

Dean remembered seeing her hand had been wrapped with some spare cloth, and gently picked her hand up from her lap. His touch had, again, caused a pained look on her face. There was clearly something else that was going on, and somehow it had to do with him. He gently unraveled the makeshift bandage, which revealed a strange bite mark. The strange thing about it seemed to be how quickly it was healing. There were tiny little bruises on her palm, and only partially punctured skin at the back of her hand.

He thought back to everything she had said so far. She heals fast, he remembered. She had thought he was someone else when he showed up, she had known about his abduction (which he still didn't understand and they still hadn't talked about), she had gone to the hospital for tubes – and who needs tubes, and why?, she'd been fighting for what seemed like her whole life, she was good at up close and personal fighting, and she wasn't surprised that there were thinking, weapon-wielding Croats out and about. She also wasn't turning after several injuries. And the biggest thing: she had said 'our immunities'.

Dean let her hand slip out of his and immediately regretted it. Sometimes a stranger's touch is a healing touch, and his body seemed to miss the connection the moment he lost it. The loss of skin-to-skin contact broke Max out of her trance.

She couldn't change the past, but she could illuminate it for someone else, even if that meant exposing her own secret. It wasn't much of a secret anymore, anyway. "Manticore abducted you," she finally said.

Dean didn't expect that. "What? What is Manticore?"

Max shifted in her seat. "It's… a genetics experiment gone wrong," she tried to sum up. How does one even being to explain all the hell that was Manticore? "They were trying to genetically engineer super soldiers – soldiers who didn't have the ability to feel or judge, who were to follow orders and never back down, and fight and die for this country."

Almost sounded like his father, Dean realized. Except his father had a different set of mores to follow, and a different set of reasons to fight, and he wanted his sons to be capable of the feeling, the judging – and to make the right choice.

Max noted Dean's thoughts sent him somewhere else for a minute. Something about his movement mimicked Alec's processes. She wondered if they thought the same way.

"So they wanted to make me a super soldier?" Dean asked, thinking that this sounded more like an idea thrown around at a comic book convention than a serious conversation he was having with a tiny brunette at the trunk of his Impala. "For real?"

Max pressed her lips together, trying to think of a gentle way to break it to him. "Not exactly."

"Well then what, exactly?" Dean was starting to feel very impatient. He seemed to be on the precipice of finding out all the details about the abduction he'd kept secret for a long time.

"They saw something special in you, and they wanted to see if there was a genetic trait you carried that, um, made you an exemplary specimen for their program." Max's thoughts drifted to Alec again. He wasn't their perfect specimen, but he was probably as close as they would get.

"Their program?" Dean asked. Why wasn't she dispensing with as much information as possible? Didn't she understand that he had waited forever for this explanation?

He sure is dense, Max thought, holding back a smile. Just like Alec. "Yeah, they took some of your DNA and combined it with some other animals' DNA to make a super soldier capable of more than just you alone would have been capable of."

Dean's eyes widened. "What! That doesn't even make any sense."

"Deny it all you want, but that's what they did." Max waited for him to accept the idea. Yeah, it sounded crazy, but she'd heard worse. Hell, she'd seen worse. "Your DNA was one big ingredient in a Petri dish cocktail, and they plugged it all into a surrogate mother.

"And after that surrogate delivered, she was probably killed. All of the babies who were cooked up all have a barcode built into their DNA."

He must have thought she was on drugs, from the look he was giving her. She continued, "Remember that Croat I was fighting? You saw those lines on her neck, right? That's her barcode. Her identification. Her designation."

Though she felt it was kind of brash, it was the most straightforward she could be. Except it hurt, too, to risk him knowing that she was gestated in a tube before put into a womb, to think that she was meant not to feel or think, to imagine what happened to her mother after she was born, and to imagine what her mother must have felt like knowing she would deliver an unthinking, unfeeling child.

"That sounds unreal." He was being honest, but he did see the Croat's barcode, and everything she said, as fucked up as it seemed, did explain a lot of what he'd seen in the last few hours.

Max stared past him into the tree for a moment. "I'm one of them," Max finally said in a near-whisper. She looked up to him. "That's how I know all this."

She had a few renegade tears threatening to break the dam of her eyelids, but she jerked her head to the right anyway and pulled her braid up, revealing the creamy, tanned skin at her neck – with her own set of black lines.

Dean leaned into her and studied her 'barcode.' So she is one of these experiments, he decided. Some kind of super soldier meant to fight and die for this country. He instantly felt like an ass. Here he was, all upset that his DNA was taken, when really, she had probably had it much worse than he did.

Max dropped her braid and stared down at her hands.

"Does it say how much you cost?" he joked, trying to lighten the mood.

Max turned back to him with a determined 'not gonna cry' look on her face. She smiled the smallest smile. Alec probably would have made that kind of joke, too. "And the reason I know that's what they did to you is that I knew your clones."

Dean pushed himself a couple steps back. "Plural? I have clones? Plural?"

Max looked down at her hands in her lap. "Had," she corrected.