This guy is fucking deluded, thought Alec as he planted himself on Cale's black, supple leather couch. Forcing Manticore's hand felt desperate and premature. There was no way one man, even with his various connections, could take on such an enormous entity. Those informants and connections would have to align like planets in an endless solar system in order to create anything other than a tiny dent in Manticore's defenses. Besides, Manticore could put him down at a moment's notice. So why would Cale pull the trigger on Manticore now?
Maybe the journalist was desperate. Maybe he'd already had so many people taken away from him and could not take it anymore. His mother, his father, his wife and possibly their baby, and finally Max, were all somehow taken from him. Was she the last proverbial straw on this camel's back?
Cale's behavior suggested that he had grown to depend on Max - mentally, emotionally, physically - and that bugged the X5, too. Yes, his dependence was yet more proof of her operational excellence, but he wished in this case that she wasn't such a stellar agent, that she hadn't inspired this scraggly hack to fall in love with her. Arguably, if she hadn't, she wouldn't have to be here now; they could have sent another agent. He could have fought harder to preventatively keep her out of Cale's clutches instead of creatively circumventing the director's orders and mission parameters now to reduce and eliminate the need for her to interact with the bespectacled coward.
The older man sat across from the younger X5, barely aware, still pointing that weapon his direction every twenty seconds, as if Alec just might get up and run.
I could, he reasoned, and there'd be nothing he could do about it. I could end his sorry life in the time it takes for him to blink, and he'd never even know it. Snuff him right out of existence. Lydecker reminded him before they left, however, that eliminating the threat prior to obtaining all possible information would be considered a 'last resort,' and that their mark was instrumental in discovering from where these other hybrids originated, not to mention a whole slew of questionable activity.
Cale's head lolled to the front and he jerked back up while he tried his best to stay aware. He probably thought the longer he kept Alec at bay, the longer he was giving Max to get back to Manticore for the antigen unchallenged. He wanted that antigen. He'd just gotten her back, and he didn't want to lose her again.
"So who the hell are you, that Manticore wants you dead so badly?" Alec figured he may as well tap the mine for any information. There were things he might be able to get Cale to reveal that Max couldn't, simply because she meant something to Cale, whereas Alec meant nothing at all to him.
"I'm... Eyes Only," Cale responded with an air of grandiosity. He saw no point in trying to hide that information now. He assumed the assassin sitting across from him already knew about his cyber alias. If he hadn't before, he did now that Max had gone live with the Eyes Only 'incriminating' broadcast.
By challenging Cale's sense of importance, Alec figured he might coerce him to admitting even more. "Who?"
The cyber journalist snapped those blue eyes open, ready to jump up if he'd only had the strength. He settled for glaring at the lean X5 maliciously. "Eyes Only. You know... the vigilante journalist...? On TV? Me."
Alec shrugged nonchalantly as if to say 'no big deal,' or maybe even 'I don't watch TV.' His response incensed Cale further.
"I uncover the truth... and bring criminals... to justice." His eyes widened while he contemplated how someone must be living under a rock to not know of Eyes Only.
Alec rolled his eyes. "No, the police, the CIA, the FBI, and courts of law bring criminals to justice." And Manticore, he added mentally. Again, he couldn't help but think this asshole was actively having delusions of grandeur.
"And you know... who keeps them... in check? Me." Logan almost pointed the gun at himself while adamantly trying to prove his importance.
There was no way he had CIA or FBI in his pocket, but Max had already confirmed that the Chief of Police was part of Cale's network. Max's mark could potentially have some senators or congresspeople on the roster, but if he'd had the feds, it'd all be low-level at best. Plus, Manticore may be a black ops entity of sorts, but all three agencies - CIA, FBI and Manticore - were working for the same team.
Wow, he is either really into the glory of bringing down a secret government entity, or he really loves Max. Maybe both. Even if the self-proclaimed truth-seeker said he loved Max, it was in some twisted self-flagellating way narcissists used to convince themselves of their own importance. Like maybe he loved her for the things she could do for him and to him. But Cale didn't know her; he couldn't. Nearly everything he thought he knew was tinged with lies; Max had made sure of that.
He hadn't heard if Max ran into the woman in the stairwell. It had been enough time now that Max should be on the ground floor, calling in the demolitions team to cauterize the dummy site. And the woman in the stairwell should have been up here already, so where was she? He couldn't give their IT team the green light because Cale still wasn't unconscious.
The older man watched Alec as intently as he could, his nervous system causing spasms which forced him to blink or twitch. Clearly, Manticore intended for Max to believe Alec as his would-be assassin instead of her, so why was this other soldier really here at all? Was he a backup plan should Max fail to infect him?
Or was it something else? Had she been brainwashed in the couple-months' stay back at her old home base, and this other guy was her, what, partner? Boyfriend? A young, handsome guy, lean and muscular, a soldier like her, same series as her, maybe more of a match for his not-quite-girlfriend than he was himself.
"So... how do you know Max?" Cale asked. The jealousy and disgust was so prevalent in his narrowed eyes that it seemed more like Cale asked why Max would debase herself by fucking a piece of trash like him.
The blond X5 sat back in his chair, surprised that Cale would have picked up on anything between him and his agent besides betrayal. He couldn't out Max as his agent or a Romeo, but he had to give the man something to hope for.
He remembered her as a young woman, about to train in the Romeo program, a girl crossing the precipice into her own. A sassy, combat-boot-wearing, genetically enhanced spy who now looked at him with a dark wonder and a sexy smile. She beguiled him. "We're..."
Luckily, he didn't have to continue, because Cale's pale hand loosened its grip on the gun, his arm dangling over the side of the chair, until he finally lost consciousness and the firearm clattered to the ground. Alec jumped up and collected the gun. Gripping the handle, he heard the barely audible swish of someone's soft steps on the hardwood and spun to face the intruder, his gun aimed directly at hers.
Must be the woman from the hallway, he deduced. Bright blonde hair stuck out from the dark hoodie, and he saw her soft blue eyes. Who was this woman, and what was she to Cale?
If she thought something was happening to Logan, she may have waited until her own breathing was calm (after the workout of taking the stairs up to the penthouse) so as not to alert whoever or whatever was in Cale's apartment. She handled the gun loosely and her hip jutted out to the side in a non-threatening stance, and for those reasons, he concluded that she had no real intention of shooting him.
"Drop it," she ordered.
For the third time tonight, the smooth metal piece clattered to the ground, and Alec put his hands up defensively. He smirked. "Fine. I was just going to put him out of his misery." The woman across from him did not know his gun had no ammo, which made him question if she'd ever actually fired a gun before and what experience she had with them.
"What's wrong with him?" Her voice cracked with concern, and he took advantage of her care for Cale by blurring forward, snatching her firearm, and pointing it right back at her. Her countenance conveyed surprise and wonder, as if to say 'how'd you do that?'
The weight was right for several bullets, but he wasn't going to shoot her either. Cale was going to need someone to administer the 'antigen' Max brought back. "Nice piece," he commented, light glinting off the weapon when he tilted it for inspection. He blurred out of the penthouse without another word, leaving the blonde speechless.
Timing is everything, Max thought. She had collected the vial of the 'antigen' Alec's persona promised would have been at the dummy base and had taken it back to Cale's. When she arrived, there was a young woman leaning over his slumped form, checking his pulse and pushing his hair away from his forehead so she could try to meet his eyes. She obviously cared for the older man.
If she was romantically interested in Cale and he was receptive, Max would have to work a lot harder to stay in Cale's orbit. Throwing in a giant obstacle with the virus would make that challenging, but not impossible. There might still be plenty of things she could do to regain his trust that didn't involve touch.
"You're Max," the blonde stated when Max made her presence known.
Guess Cale told her about me. Max nodded curtly.
She'd given the woman - Asha, as she'd introduced herself - the vial and instructed she make sure to administer it to the older man.
She waited for about an hour as Asha paced between Cale and his office, checking his vitals roughly every ten minutes. Finally, his eyes cleared and he replaced his glasses. Asha felt the heaviness of the situation and excused herself to Cale's restroom.
Max offered a helpless pout.
"You don't have to stay all the way over there," he said softly. "You can come closer."
What, does this guy have a death wish? "Better not risk it," she said, herself, unsure of what would really happen to him if they kissed again or even touched, or how long of an exposure it might take to actually kill him, if that's really what this virus was intended to do. Why would Manticore do this to her if they didn't want her to immediately eliminate Cale? She folded her arms and closed herself off from Cale, angry now at Alec, who'd kept this part of the plan from her.
"Max," he tried, preparing to stand. "Come-"
"I gotta bounce." She left the sad vigilante standing in his living room.