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Alec didn't take anything from anybody. But Max also knew that the young male X5 was backed into a corner by Melissa Brown. He couldn't very well threaten or manhandle the woman afterall, nor did she seem inclined to take a polite "no" for an answer. If Alec was too adamant in refusing her sexual overtures, either physically or verbally, she'd likely turn the tables and make him out to be the aggressor. Bad press, all the way around.

Alec's solution to the entire problem was to ignore it. Max, however, wasn't inclined to wait around for Ms. Brown's next attempt to lure a supersoldier into her bed, especially this supersoldier.

"Ms. Brown will see you now," the woman's secretary told Max who'd been waiting impatiently in the councilwoman's outer office for nearly an hour. Melissa Brown ran her late husband's bakery empire, and had a fancy set-up in one of Seattle's more premiere downtown towers.

Max strode into the lady's inner sanctum, fully prepared to deliver a diatribe about "casting couch" manners. However, the site of Ms. Brown seated behind her huge plexiglass desk brought Max up short. The lady was gorgeous, in a predatory kind of way, her face a flawless sculpture in classic beauty with a body to match. Dressed in a tight fitting dark blue bodice with a neckline that plunged to her waist, breasts at least two sizes larger than Max's seemed on the verge of erupting from the top of the outfit. (If the flimsy line of material barely covering the woman's nipples had been any scanter, the outfit wouldn't have been legal to wear in public.) Max silently gave Alec points for turning his back on such pleasing eye candy.

Blue eyes too vivid to be natural peered at Max as Melissa Brown reached up to adjust the hat partially covering her short jet black hair. The piece of millinery would have looked absurd on just about anyone else, with its bright colored feathers and sequins adorning what was essentially a triangle of red felt. However, for some reason, on this lady it seemed merely part of an incredibly expensive ensemble -- an extension of her colorful personality and wealth.

But, it was the sly humor sparkling in the depths of those eerie blue eyes, not the outfit, that gave Max pause. Suddenly self conscious about her own rather plain jeans and t-shirt, the X5 tugged on her black leather jacket and assumed an adversarial pose. "I want you to leave my man alone," Max said, getting straight to the point.

"Your man?" Ms. Brown seemed genuinely puzzled.

"Councilman Alec McDowell," Max clarified. "I'm Max Guevara, head of Terminal City. Alec works for me." It was rearranging the truth a bit, Max realized, but she knew she needed to have some political clout in this room.

"He works for me as well," Melissa said with a wicked smile. She eyed Max up and down. "This really is between the councilman and myself, a private matter as it were. I don't see how it's any of your business."

"You can't tie your vote to whether or not Alec agrees to fuck you," Max said, getting crudely to the point. "He's already told you no, but you're still threatening to vote against the Terminal City medical rights bill if he doesn't let you in his pants."

"That's right," Melissa said, apparently not ashamed in the least that she was willing to sell her vote for sexual services.

Max was puzzled. "Why Alec?" she said. "It's not like you couldn't afford any number of boy toys." She glanced around at the expensively appointed office with its antique furniture and masters' works on the walls.

"I'll answer your question with a question," Melissa replied. "Why Alec for you?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

Ms. Brown laughed, the sound deep, throaty, and slightly vicious. "It's obvious our little supersoldier means something to you as well."

"Alec's family," Max said tightly.

"Of course he is," Melissa chuckled as she examined one of her long, red-enameled fingernails. She glanced up then. "Oh please, Ms. Guevara. Give me credit for recognizing the competition. You're sleeping with that pretty little boy and we both know it."

"My personal life is none of your business," Max said. "I just came here to warn you to quit harassing my man."

"Does that mean you don't want my vote and the votes of the other council members I can influence?"

For the briefest of moments, Max wondered if maybe she was making this too hard. Hell, let Alec shag the bitch and be done with it. He wouldn't mind that much, would he? But then she remembered the look of utter disgust in Alec's eyes when he'd told her about Melissa Brown's proposition. The guy might be a lot of things, but a prostitute wasn't one of them. Not to mention the fact that the thought of Ms. Brown with her claws in Alec that way turned Max's stomach.

"No deal," Max said, crossing arms in front of her chest. "Alec's not interested, and neither am I. If it costs Terminal City votes, then too bad. However, I guarantee you that someday you'll be coming to us for a favor, and then you're going to be very sorry you tried to force my man into your bed -- and you're right, I do mean my man." Max held onto those weird blue eyes a moment longer. "Are we clear?" she added softly.

"Perfectly," Melissa Brown said.

Max wondered why the woman was smiling.

"But I'm still going to have him someday, you know," the councilwoman added softly. "One way -- or another."

Before she could question that odd statement, Max's cell phone rang. "Excuse me," she said. "We're done here I take it?"

"We're done," Ms. Brown said, nodding at her office door.

Passing through the waiting area and stepping into the hallway, thinking how that could have gone better, Max answered the call.

"Max," Dix's agitated voice rang in her ear. "You need to get back here right away. Something's happened."

Max's heart skipped a beat. "What?" she said. "Tell me now."

"There was a shooting in the market."

"Is it Joshua? Is he okay?"

"Joshua's fine," Dix said. "But Max, Alec took a bullet, and it's bad ... real bad."

*****

An eerie silence blanketed the Terminal City mall. The gunfire had ceased, the hit-and-run Steelheads gone in a squeal of tires as quickly as they'd attacked, the shouting and cries of frightened vanished customers only a memory.

Joshua, still holding the handgun Alec had insisted he keep in his booth, cautiously raised his head from behind the counter, sniffing the air and looking around. There was the sound of a baby's cry -- Eve, safe in her mother's arms but scared by the commotion. He saw Dix holding his shoulder, blood running down the sleeve of his jacket, and Mole was nursing a bullet wound in his side. Luke seemed to be all right, although looking more shaken than Joshua had ever seen the little mutant. Several other transhumans were picking themselves up off the ground, still cradling their weapons and watching warily, their faces mirroring the shame they felt at being caught off guard by the enemy.

Someone was missing.

"Mole!" Luke cried out. "I need help here! A medic!"

"Alec!" Joshua shouted, his gut clenching as he realized that the still figure lying amidst all those shards of broken pottery and splintered shelving was his friend. Scrambling over the debris, the dog man reached Alec's side, and looked up desperately at Mole who'd hobbled over as well.

The lizard man, for once without his trademark cigar, clenched his jaw in a hard line even as he knelt and tore open the front of Alec's bloody t-shirt to better see the damage.

"Alec?" Joshua whimpered, cradling his best friend's head in his lap as Mole placed two fingers on the pulse point of the X5's throat.

Alec's eyes were open and unseeing, the pupils dilated.

"Alec?" Joshua cried softly, bowing his head as the tears began to flow.

A sharp poke in the shoulder from Mole made the dog man look up. "He's not breathin' and he's got no pulse! Cryin' ain't gonna help! Do you know CPR?"

"CPR?" Joshua didn't understand.

"Get out of the way!" Dix yelled, roughly shoving Joshua aside and laying Alec's head back on the floor. Then he bent over and put his lips to the X5's, breathing air in while Mole began chest compressions. "Where the fuck are our medics?" the lizard man screamed over his shoulder. "This soldier needs help, now!"

*****

Mole carried their fallen leader into TC's infirmary where two field trained medics were waiting. Lying Alec with surprising gentleness on the examining table, he then stood back and let the experts take over the CPR. One of the medics, a blonde X5 named Caleb who was shorter than most of his brethren, pushed a breathing tube down Alec's throat to make it easier to force air into his lungs. Joshua hovered in the doorway, wringing his big hands, eyes bloodshot from grief.

The second medic, an X4 with sharp pinched features and bright red hair whom everyone called Doc, was examining his patient's chest wound.

"One bullet," Doc said. "Lodged against the back of the rib cage from the looks of things." He glanced up at his companion who was still pumping the intubation bag. "I can't tell for sure unless we crack his chest, but it looks like it clipped his heart. I can't keep a beat."

"Alec was shot in the heart?" Joshua murmured. Mole, standing behind him, put a comforting hand on the dog man's shoulder. But there really wasn't anything he could say.

Alec's eyes were closed now, his features relaxed as if in sleep, his skin pale and lips slightly blue.

"If his heart's damaged ..." Caleb just let the sentence hang, but everyone in the room knew what he was inferring. Medical supplies such as blood, antibiotics, and surgical instruments were scarce in TC. If Alec's wound was too serious, they wouldn't have the resources to save him.

"Get him to County General then," Mole offered, speaking around his trademark cigar once again.

"There isn't time," Doc said, not unkindly. But while he talked, he was examining the wound more closely, probing it with a latex-gloved finger. Suddenly, his face brightened. "Found the problem," he said, once more looking up at his colleague. "This soldier's got a hole in his right atrium." He grimaced and pushed his finger more deeply. "Got a heartbeat though," he added. "For now ... He hasn't given up yet."

"He needs surgery -- immediately," Caleb said. "As in within the next five minutes."

"Can you do anything for him?" Mole asked. "Can you really fix him. Because if you can't then--"

"No!" Joshua barked. "They have to try! They can't just let him die!"

"Alec's already dead," Mole said harshly, puffing hard on his cigar. "We can't fix this, Josh. We can't fix him. I'm sorry. The best thing would be to just let him--"

"Maybe I can," Doc interrupted. "Fix him." To Caleb he said, "Hang six units of X5 blood."

"But that will almost wipe out our blood bank for his series," the short X5 protested.

"We can replenish it," Doc snapped. "Then get ready to help me crack his chest. If I can sew up this hole, and keep his heart beating, the guy will heal. You know the recuperative powers of your series. They're damn near miraculous."

"You're going to work on a beating heart?" Caleb questioned, even as he was retrieving the blood from a cooler. "Doc, you're a field medic, not a surgeon, or a magician."

"I've got some surgical experience," Doc shot back. "And no, I'm not going to work on a beating heart. I'm going to stop his heart, sew it up, then start it again. Alec's X5. He can go at least eight minutes without oxygen before his brain suffers damage. I don't even need that long." He locked eyes with Caleb. "And while I'm working on his heart, you retrieve the slug."

"You're gonna operate on a dead man?" Mole asked, not quite believing what he was hearing. "Then try and bring him back?" He was shaking his head. "I don't think Alec would like that. Better to just let him go."

"No!" a new voice said from behind Joshua.

All eyes turned to the doorway where a very shaken looking Max stood. "Save him," she said simply. "Do what you have to, but ... don't let Alec die. He's too important for us to lose ... too important for me to lose."