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"You owe me five thousand bucks," Max said as she sat across from Alec in the Bangkok nightclub. Ignoring the startled look on her companion's face, she took a sip of her espresso as her eyes automatically raked the room. The swirling psychedelic lights were playing havoc with her jet lag, and the flashing pink and blue neon runners illuminating the huge bar that anchored the middle of the dance floor didn't help much either. The place was also full of smoke, its source most likely illegal not to mention intoxicating. Waving a hand in front of her face to chase the fumes away, she scrunched up her nose in a scowl. It figured Alec would pick a place like this to bring her.

"Five thousand! Aw, come on, Max. It was only twenty five hundred before and that included a birth certificate!"

"You're paying for my passport too, pretty boy. And don't forget the plane fare."

"Yeah, but I ended up here because I was on an Eyes Only mission. Remember? What about business expenses?"

Max dubiously eyed the extremely buxom nude dancer undulating in a cage not ten feet away. "Business expenses? You calling spending two days in the most wicked sex spot on earth a business expense?"

"Hey, I was kidnapped," Alec whined. "They were gonna sell me into white slavery."

"It's a wonder they didn't sell your transgenic ass to the Chinese, or some other government who'd just love to cut you up into tiny pieces and see what makes those gorgeous genetics of yours tick," Max said dryly.

"They didn't know what they had," Alec commented, his eyes on the dancer who was performing a move Max wasn't sure even a transgenic could manage. He signaled a passing waiter. "Raan a Haan Yuu thii nay?" he said.

"What did you just ask him?" Max snapped. "It had better not be for Miss Nudie's phone number."

Alec smirked, his hazel-green eyes sparkling. "Why Max, you're not jealous are you?"

"Hardly," she huffed, crossing arms in front of her chest and trying not to compare herself with the far more well endowed dancer. "We just don't have time to fool around here. Besides, you'd probably catch something."

"I asked him where the restaurant is," Alec said. "I wanna get a good meal before our flight leaves tonight."

"I didn't know you spoke Thai," Max said, a note of grudging admiration in her voice.''

"Doesn't everyone? You don't know a lot of things about me, Max. I mean, It's not like you ever bothered to ask."

"So, I'm asking now. You learned languages at Manticore? How many?"

"I'm fluent in fourteen, can get by in another five or six. Mandarin Chinese is a bitch though. I wouldn't want to have to talk my way over the Great Wall or anything. "A haan?" Alec repeated to another passing waiter. "Food?" He listened carefully while he finally got an answer, then turned to Max. "He says there's a decent restaurant one block down across the street, 'The Tender Dog,' or some such name. Just don't order anything on the menu without askin' me what it says first. We wouldn't wanna accidentally chow down on some of Joshua's kin, or, Heaven forbid, some of ours."

"I wouldn't dream of it," Max said as she pulled her chair back and stood up, leaving her half full coffee on the table. "And you can fly a plane, too," she continued. Her eyebrows inched up another notch. "Manticore must have been super pissed when you didn't turn out to be the good little undercover assassin they thought they'd trained, after putting all that time and effort into you."

"And they never let me forget it, either," Alec said rather darkly. "The fact they thought I was a failure."

"That's all right," Max said, finding her voice surprisingly sympathetic as they headed for the front door. "Now you're--"

"There he is!" a man's voice shouted. "The transgenic!"

"Good grief, what now?" Alec said disgustedly. "Remind me to never vacation here again." But he knew his cue when he heard it. Grabbing Max by the arm he whirled and looked for the back door he'd marked when they entered the place.

*****

"Someone reported your barcode afterall," Max commented as they carefully made their way down the alley behind the nightclub. "Either the slavers or airport security."

"Guess we're gettin' a worldwide reputation," Alec said, drawing a gun from the back waistband of his jeans where it had been hidden by his leather jacket. "Us transgenics, I mean."

Max's eyes widened at the sight of the semi-automatic. "Where did you get that?"

"Off some bad guys," Alec replied, his voice a touch playful, as if he'd had fun acquiring the firearm. "A pretty young thing like me needs some serious protection here in Sodom and Gomorrah land. I already came close to bein' raped once this week. I'm not gonna let it happen again."

Max looked like she wanted to ask about that, but she apparently sensed he wasn't going to give out intimate details regarding his little sojourn with the slavers. Still, she shuddered slightly. Then she turned her attention to their pursuers.

There were three of them. From their Spanish looks Alec figured they were part of the slaver gang, which made it all the more pleasurable to whip their asses. Once again, the odds were good -- three ordinaries against two extremely pissed off, not to mention hungry, transgenics.

Alec's whirling crescent kick took the first man to the ground, knocking him cold in an instant. A lightening round of punches to the solar plexus downed the second, and Max's roundhouse kick took out the third. The duo hadn't even broken a sweat. Nor had they needed to use the firearm.

However, the sound of approaching sirens and blowing whistles told them they weren't out of the woods yet. "We've got to make that flight," Max warned. "If we don't, I don't have enough money to buy more tickets. We'll be stuck here."

"We'll make it," Alec said with more confidence than the situation warranted. He really did feel kind of bad about the whole thing. It was his carelessness afterall, that had landed him halfway around the world with nothing more than the clothes on his back (and almost not those). And then Max had been forced to come to the rescue. Now, she was in trouble too.

*****

"Have you heard from Max and Alec?" Joshua asked Logan, peering over his shoulder at the computer screen and trying to decipher the images.

"No," Logan said. "And that worries me a little bit." He turned around and studied the dog man over the top rims of his glasses. "Alec left two of those slavers alive. They probably hightailed it straight to their boss as soon as they got off the plane with a story about an incredibly ballsy transgenic who would be worth a king's ransom to the right buyer. They very well might have started looking for Alec in the city, hoping to pick him up before he can get out of town." He smiled grimly. "At least that's what I would do if a genetically engineered biosynth soldier fell into my lap."

Logan looked back at the computer screen. "In fact," he said, typing rapidly until a new document opened up, "the Chinese government has already sent a message to the embassy here in the U.S. implying that they're brokering a deal for an X5 male. Apparently they've been angling for a Terminal City X series transgenic ever since the siege ended last July and everyone and his mother found out about you guys."

"You think Alec is in trouble? Captured?"

"If he is, then whoever has him has their hands full," Logan replied. "As I told Max, dealing with a transgenic as well trained as Alec is like having a tiger by the tail.

Joshua grinned. "Tiger by tail. Cat. Like Alec when he's angry."

"Exactly," Logan said. "And if he's being chased all over Bangkok, I imagine Alec is in a pretty bad mood. Which makes him very dangerous. I just hope Max hooks up with him, and the Thai government doesn't get involved. X5's are a lot of things, but bullet proof isn't one of them."

Logan began typing more data, and resumed watching the screen. "I also hope Max and Alec can get on that plane tonight," he added. "If they're detained by airport security, all hell's going to break loose." He rested his chin one one hand, picturing the world headline news already. And then he sighed. All the Transgenic Cause needed right now was an international incident involving Max and TC's elected leader, who also happened to be her handsome, all too photogenic "breeding partner."

*****

Meanwhile, Max and Alec were, indeed, being chased all over Bangkok -- and Alec was ... irritated. However, Max was pretty pissed as well.

"This is all your fault!" she hissed as they crouched behind an incredibly rancid smelling dumpster. "I asked you to check the plane back in Seattle. A truly simple job. But no, you had to get yourself kidnapped -- to Thailand!"

"You sure were glad to see me though," Alec said, refusing to be baited as he watched a stray cat, an orange tabby, sashaying its way nonchalantly down the middle of the alley. "That was a really big hug you gave me when I met your flight back at the airport. If I didn't know better, Maxie, I'd say you'd been worried about me."

Max didn't answer -- her silence apparently deliberate. But then suddenly the cat screeched, and 452 jumped. Without thinking, Alec put an arm around her shoulders. "Don't worry," he said huskily in her ear as he gave her a reassuring squeeze. "It's just a relative of ours sayin' 'hello'."

However, it wasn't the cat's cry that had Max shaking. "Alec," she said in a low voice. "I think we've attracted the wrong kind of attention. Those don't look like slavers or smugglers to me."

"What are you talkin' about?" Alec said, popping his head around the dumpster just enough to get a glimpse of the men now blocking the entrance to the dead end alley.

And suddenly, their situation didn't seem humorous to him any more.

"Max, those are soldiers."

"I know."

Alec peeked out again, then ducked and sat hard on the asphalt with his back against the filthy metal bin, his mind racing. "Max, that's Lydecker out there."

"What?"

She, too, took a quick look around the corner of the trash container, and then turned to Alec, her face as pale as his.

"Lydecker must have gotten word about me from the Thai government," Alec muttered. "He wouldn't want a foreign nation to capture an X5. Old 'Deck never could stomach havin' one of his kids in enemy hands. Not to mention he'd love to add us to his own private collection, especially since we told him no more independent missions after that Syria fiasco."

"You mean he'd love to add you to his collection," Max said. "If he can snag you here on foreign turf, away from your people and your support ..."

"I'd just disappear," Alec said grimly. "He probably thinks I'm alone and vulnerable."

"How many soldiers did you count?" Max asked, her brown eyes filled with worry.

"Too many," Alec said in a low, tight voice. "Max!" he added quickly, grabbing hold of her arm when he saw she was about to call out to Lydecker. "He'll take you too. You know he will."

"I don't think so," Max said with more confidence than her eyes showed. Ignoring Alec's alarmed expression, she held up her hands and stepped out into the open.

"What's going on, Donald?" she called out.

Donald Lydecker, his weathered face split by a big grin, stood up from behind a stack of wooden crates. "Max," he said, sounding as if he was greeting a beloved old friend. "I had no idea you were visiting this lovely country. And here I thought it was only 494 who'd managed to get his sorry ass caught in a sling."

Max shrugged. "Hey," she said calmly. "Don't put that on me. I just brought the big idiot a passport. We're on our way to catch a flight home." She gestured to the six soldiers standing behind Lydecker. "What's with the armed escort? I mean, the thought's nice, the help and all, but me and mine are okay. You guys can leave now."

Sweating profusely, Alec swallowed hard and remained concealed behind the dumpster. He seriously doubted that Max could talk them out of this, which meant there was going to be fighting. Reaching beneath his jacket, he pulled out the semi-automatic again and checked the clip. However, the sound of a gun being cocked brought his eyes slowly upward -- to see Lane, X5-600, smiling benignly down at him, the barrel of a P90 submachine gun pointed at his head. His former unit mate had apparently sneaked down from the roof.

Max was still baiting Lydecker.

"Max!" Alec called out, as, without being asked, he slowly set the pistol down on the ground and rose to his feet, his hands in the air. "Max, we're screwed!"

Max turned around, and her breath caught in her throat at the site of Lydecker's pet killer holding Alec at gunpoint.

"I have a private jet waiting at the airport," Lydecker said quietly as Lane and Alec came out from behind the dumpster, and the rest of his men lined up behind him, their own guns drawn.

"Let her go," Alec had to try, nodding at Max. "You know how important she is to the others. Take me. But let Max go home."

"I'll consider it," Lydecker said, his eyes going to 452. "Later." He pulled a pair of handcuffs out of his pocket and tossed them to Alec. "Put those on. Come quietly and maybe we can forego a sedative." He smiled then, at the look on Alec's face. "Cheer up, son. You really are going home, even if you don't realize it yet. A few weeks of reindoctrination and your old unit mates will welcome you back with open arms. The past year and a half will have never existed for you, and you'll be able to resume your duties ... be the soldier you were created to be. You know, you really did make a huge mistake when you terminated our agreement for independent services."

"I'll never kill for you again," Alec said quietly. "As for the independent work ...." He shrugged. "Hey, what can I say? Good as the pay was, it wasn't worth the risk. 'Sides, I got a better offer." He glanced at Max.

"We'll see." Lydecker tossed a second pair of cuffs to Max. "Just a precaution," he said.

Max looked quickly at Alec ... at the gun pointed at his head.

"I'd hate to lose him," Lydecker said levelly, reading her mind. "But believe me, Lane will kill him if he has to. You see, I'm still firmly of the notion that my kids are a danger to the world if left unsupervised. Either 494 comes with me now ... or he's put down."

"That your philosophy regarding me, as well?" Max asked, still holding the handcuffs but not putting them on.

"Do you really want to find out, Max?" Lydecker asked softly. "Play your cards right, and you'll be back in Terminal City by dinner time tomorrow. I can be generous when I want to be."

"But Alec won't be with me," Max said bitterly.

"No."

"Max," Alec said. "Take the man's offer. Just ... do what he says. There's no need for us both to go down."

Max turned to him. "I won't let him have you. I won't let him do to you what he did to Brin ... turn you into a mindless killer."

"There's a lot of room between here and there, Maxie," Alec said quietly, his eyes unwaveringly on Lydecker.

Clenching her jaw, knowing Alec was right, Max snapped on the cuffs. Now, in an alley in Bangkok with half a dozen guns pointed at them, wasn't the time for this battle.