Max scrambled to try to sit up, but she felt a little depleted, and on top of that, she had no memory of getting from the ring to this room.
"Hold on, champ," her handler said, scooping his hand under her shoulder to help ease her upright. She had been laid out on a long table in a narrow room lined with old metal lockers. The whole place smelled like old sweaty leather and disinfectant spray. They were alone, but there was no guarantee someone wouldn't walk in at any moment.
"Champ?" Max took a breath, wincing from the pain in her side, and met Alec's concerned gaze with her one good eye - the other was still swollen shut. "Did we win?"
He nodded. "Novak short-circuited. The implant went haywire, her adrenaline spiked and her heart gave out. Some G-men in dark suits swept in real quick to get her body out of there. I'm guessing they wanted to retrieve the tech. Technically, you won by default."
Won by default? What the fuck? thought Max, still feeling a bit lightheaded. "But.. I'm..." she trailed, unsure of how much she could divulge in this room. I'm Manticore; I should have been able to take her down. I shouldn't have been knocked out. I shouldn't have failed.
"We're about ninety percent sure her coach injected heavy metal into her gloves, but the reason she knocked you out is that you kinda..." he hesitated, struggling to find the right words that wouldn't sound patronizing, "seized there for a minute."
"I what!?" While that did explain a few things - namely, why she woke up weak and dizzy in the locker room - Max wondered how the geniuses in genetics let this happen to her. "I had a seizure?"
"Probably brought on from the barrage of heavy hits to your head."
She felt along her scalp in different places but nothing seemed inflamed or broken or sore. Maybe it was just her face. And her ribs cried out with sharp pain, maybe a cracked rib, she reasoned. Then she saw the blood on Alec's shirt and panicked, reaching out her hand in the blind spot of her left eye to check him for injuries. "Are you okay? The blood...?"
"It's yours. Your brow busted open again. We'll have to assess your eye after the swelling goes down."
Max raised a hand to prod gently at her inflamed eyelid and cheek. She grinned her teeth against the pain. What a clusterfuck. "Did we at least get the girls?"
He nodded. "Luca's meeting with the seller right now. He's going to hang behind. Our distribution partners are meeting him here. But, interesting development: it's actually young men, not women."
"Wow. I didn't see that coming," she admitted.
"How could you have, with one busted up eye?" he joked, producing a small ointment bottle from the first aid kit they'd brought.
She fixed him with a warning glare and the suggestion of a smile.
Sweeping her flyaways back, Alec squirted some of the healing salve into his palm, dipped two fingers into it, and applied it to her brow. "No one saw that coming. But we'll be meeting with the suppliers. Hopefully we'll get their contract."
She knew that when he said 'contract,' it was the other kind. The kind with bullet holes and knife wounds, maybe extradition. The idea that these traffickers would be eliminated filled her with a certain sense of balance. Justice. Maybe she hadn't really 'won' the fight, but at least this whole thing would result in eradicating some evil assholes.
She held her breath while Alec's thumb carefully smeared a bit of the miracle water around the edges of her swollen eye. "Sorry," he offered. "Trying to be gentle."
'Miracle water' was a kind of salve that the lab coats at Manticore cooked up to help their hybrids heal faster. On solos, their Go Bags all had a small bottle or tube of it for emergency use.
Max covered his hand with hers. "How long have I been down?"
"Just a few minutes."
Her boxing injuries notwithstanding, Max tried to catalogue if she felt any different mentally after her apparent seizure. "So, we going back home to get me a twofer on an MRI and a cat scan?"
"Yep. We'll debrief in the air."
Twelve hours into the flight home, everyone except the pilots had retired to their personal quarters for sleeping. Everyone except the pilots and Max, the latter of which lay awake in her darkened cabin with only the light of the news screen making shadows out of corners, wondering if her handler was also awake in his. Wondering what he was doing.
Max sat up and prodded at her puffy eye. The cut on her brow stung, and the stretched skin over her swollen cheek simmered with pain. She rummaged around in her bag with one hand, trying to find the little tube of 'miracle water' by touch. If she couldn't find any in her bag, the jet probably had a whole crateful on hand somewhere.
Must've left it in the bathroom.
As quietly as possible, she opened the door, padded out into the hallway on her tiptoes and maneuvered her way to the bathroom.
"Can't sleep?" asked Alec from just a few feet away.
Her one good eye drank him in; wearing just his grey sweats from his ensemble as Hector, and with a whole lot of his golden skin on display, Alec looked warm. Delicious. Thirsty.
She wasn't wearing much, either, just her panties, her own grey sweatpants, and a white cami. Not her sexiest outfit, but if necessary, she could disrobe in three seconds flat, and then she'd be naked before him.
She imagined splaying her hands on his pecs, his heartbeat pulsing against her palm, and dragging her fingertips down to his sweats. With one gentle tug, those sweatpants would slide right off his hips, and the legs of the vee his hips made would lead right to his rock hard length. He could swirl the ridged tip of his cock in her wetness until she begged him to push all the way in.
I'd fucking do it, too. Beg him to fill me all the way up until his hips lift mine in a grind so erotic it'd make us both whine. Max felt her blood rush through her veins and the pupil of her non-swollen eye expand with arousal. Good god, maybe I'm the thirsty one, she realized. She closed her mouth to try to remember his question.
"Is it too hard?"
I don't know, is it? she wanted to ask in return. "Uh," she started, language tripping over itself on its way to her mouth. "Y-yes, I- I couldn't sleep anymore. I was looking for the miracle water."
In the din of the hall, she couldn't quite tell if his pupils were blown out, too. He reached for the wall shelf and grabbed a small tube. "Here's one."
"Will you help me?"
"Of course," he said, his fingertips breezing her arm to guide her into the restroom. He followed her in and shut the door behind them.
"Where do you want me?"
The bathroom was much brighter, so when Max turned, she could see his lust-ridden expression. "Anywhere," he replied, swallowing thickly, twisting the cap of the tube in restraint.
"Really?" Max leaned against the counter, wishing with her whole being that he would envelop her. The wave of him could crash over her and drag her under.
His freckles darkened and he rubbed a thumb across his bottom lip as if it held the answer to whether or not he would kiss her. "Can you hop up on the counter?" Alec circled one arm around her back and helped lift her to seated position on the surface behind her, which had the added benefit of making them about the same height. Despite the sharp pain in her rib, she liked being chest to chest.
She slowly let her arms back down, caressing his shoulders and arms on the way, wondering why she always felt so intoxicated by him.
"Let's see that eye," he said, tilting her face up by her chin.
Yes, his pupils were blown, and yes, his telltale freckles dotted haphazardly on his cheeks and nose, but somehow he managed to control his baser desires. He zeroed in on the inflamed part of her cheek, her swollen lid, and her eyebrow, already in the process of stitching itself closed.
"I bet it won't take more than two days for this to heal." He focused on popping the cap of the tube open. "Especially with this stuff racing around amplifying your central nervous system." Featherlight, Alec applied a bit of the salve.
Max cupped his jaw and thumbed the left half of his lips. He turned his face to drop a kiss into her palm. She let out a tight breath. Surely Manticore didn't have cameras in the bathroom. Plus, no one else seemed to be awake, so really, they were alone again, she justified. She slipped her other hand along his side and pulled him closer by his back, letting her knees fall open.
Energy sparked under his skin. He wanted to kiss her, touch her, bury himself in her. "Max," his whisper skated up her chest. "I don't want to hurt you."
She wrapped one leg around his waist and both hands crept to the base of his neck. "Then take it slow," she purred back and brought his lips to hers.
Alec set the miracle water on the counter and circled his arms around her back, gently diving in to their kiss. Her lips were like smooth velvet, and he didn't mind the coppery taste when he tongued her lower lip into his mouth. Her stuttered exhale encouraged him to delve deeper.
All Max could think was get him closer. She pressed her chest against his and her fingertips roamed his broad back as she opened her mouth further to his probing tongue. The electricity between them surged when she let out an animalistic feminine growl and suddenly his lips were everywhere: her uninjured cheek, her arching neck, the dip of her collarbone. When she motioned to tilt her chin down, he thumbed it up and caressed from throat to jaw with the tip of his tongue, trailing his fingertips down her sides to grip her hips.
Take them off, she thought. Hoped. Take my sweats and panties off and put your mouth on me.
But Mother Nature had other plans and could really be a fickle bitch. The plane hit some pockets of rough air and the jet shook with turbulence, which made them jerk side to side. "Ah!" cried Max, bringing her hand to her ribs.
The captain said something over the loud speaker, but neither transgenic could hear it with all that blood rushing through their ears as they attempted to rebalance their physical and sexual equilibrium.
"You okay?"
Her feline DNA pushed her gaze down to his erection. Goddamn, those sweatpants are amazing. She met his concerned-turned-unabashed stare. "Yeah," she answered. "You?"
"Yeah. Well, uninjured anyway," he amended.
She smirked proudly and he broke into a guilty grin. Yeah, she knew he was hard as hell, and he knew she knew.
The plane hit another rough patch and again they swerved to one side.
Alec helped Max down to her feet. "To be continued," he promised. He didn't stop her when she raised up to her tiptoes and kissed him once more.
"See you out there?"
"Yeah, I need a minute," he said.
Max left the restroom and headed back to her cabin. She'd left the news station on, and as she sat down and thought about satiating herself to the memory of Alec's kisses, her attention diverted to the bulletin that popped onto the screen.
"Do not attempt to adjust your set. This is a streaming freedom video bulletin. This cable hack will last exactly sixty seconds. It cannot be traced, it cannot be stopped, and it is the only free voice left in this city."
Max watched the screen intently, the bright blue of the banners blocking the space from Cale's eyebrows up and from his nose down. It was kinda his thing - Eyes Only. Sometimes that's all she could see in her memories of him. Piercing eyes full of masked hatred. Conniving, narrowed eyes of the man who sometimes used her like a goddamn fleshlight.
"For decades, billions of your tax dollars have been diverted into research and development to fund genetics projects. One such agency, Project Manticore, has been manipulating genes to create human hybrid mercenaries - assassins - and using them to destroy life."
Images flashed across the screen - a slew of images that were not attributable to Manticore. Just flat-out lies. Dead people; bodies strewn about like the aftermath of a battle. Men, women and children littered the landscape. Then animals.
Christ. Why does he have such a hate-on?
"Alec," she called out. "You gotta see this."
Within two seconds, he was at her door, concern spread on his face. Her eyes were glued to the screen as the voice continued.
"Women of all ages and backgrounds are brutalized and murdered - even expectant mothers. Countless children - and babies - used as stem cell farms, only to be murdered once they stop producing."
More clips and images played on the screen - ones of hospital nurseries full of babies hooked up to tubes and wires, oxygen, blood pressure and heartbeat monitors.
The suggestion was clear: Cale believed Manticore would stop at nothing to achieve its endgame. What he thought could be their endgame, she wasn't sure. Immeasurable profit? To be the best and overfunded private military operation the world had ever seen?
Max shook her head.
"But know this: You will be stopped."
The transmission ended abruptly and the scheduled program resumed.
"Fuck." Though it sent a twinge of pain through her forehead, she scowled.
Alec folded his arms across his chest, suddenly feeling a little underdressed for the severity of the new situation. And he was pissed off at Cale's apparent strategy. They could both prepare to rejoin this mission post haste, but he'd had several other missions on the books, and now they'd all have to be reassigned. His jaw ticked in frustration. Lydecker would be calling any minute now. "Looks like Cale just bumped up our timetable."
Max looked past him into the darkness of the hallway, her mind searching for something that felt like it was at the tip of her subconscious. Yes, Cale hated hybrids. He hated Manticore because he thought Manticore was responsible for his wife's death. But this crusade against them, it was just the tip of something deeper. Jealousy that he was not a part of it somehow? she wondered.
On top of that, she dreaded the fact that she was about to go back under for this assignment. She'd steadily grown to truly hate the cyber vigilante, realization dawning the longer she spent away from him, and she was really going to have to steel her resolve to embody Max Guevara, Cale's somewhat girlfriend, Manticore refugee, freedom fighter. The idea of intercourse with the man made her nauseated. Whatever it takes, she remembered Zack's mantra.
"Max." Alec reached out to her. "It's going to be okay, I promise."
For that brief moment, the transgenic twosome entranced one another, poised on the precipice of this mission. Her one open chocolate eye cooled with courage.
"You don't have to do that," he said. "You don't have to put up that wall with me. Remember, I will be there, too. I am here to support you, protect you; I'm on your side, first. Always."
She thumbed the back of his hand. Zack had never been like this.
He took a breath. "Lydecker's probably shitting a brick right now. Should be calling any second, so I'm gonna grab my phone." He thumbed the direction of his cabin. "You gonna be okay?"
"Yeah, thanks." Max paused, that niggling feeling returning to the forefront of her mind. "Hey, do you have access to Cale's file? I'd like to review it."
"Yeah, you can use my login. I'll bring you my tablet in a few." With that, he left her cabin.