ARCHIVE: No

Max knew there were important decisions to be made in Terminal City right now, and, with Alec out of action, she was the one everyone would turn to. At that very moment, Mole was recruiting volunteers for a strike mission against the Steelheads on their own turf. He, and a lot of other TC mutants, wanted to wipe the cyber-tech jokers off the face of the Earth for what they'd done.

Just what we need, Max thought wearily. She could see tomorrow's paper -- "Mutant Freaks Slaughter Seattle Citizens!" In her heart, she agreed with Mole. Alec needed to be avenged. But in her mind she knew it was a stupid idea, not to mention a dangerous one. They could lose everything they'd worked for: their rights, the city's tolerance, even their freedom.

She wondered what Alec would want them to do. It was, after all, his life hanging by a thread. But honestly, in her current emotional state, she wasn't sure she should be the one to lead.

"Max," Joshua said softly, poking his head inside the doorway of the infirmary cubicle where Alec lay. The X5 had survived the operation ... barely. Doc and Caleb had had a hell of a time getting his heart to start beating again, using the defibrillator over half a dozen times before they got sinus rhythm. However, Doc's surgical handiwork seemed to be holding. Alec was breathing normally now, his pulse weak but steady. Hopefully he'd wake up soon. If only he'd open those damn gorgeous eyes of his ...

"Max," Joshua repeated her name. "If you want to go talk to the others, I'll stay with Alec."

Max looked up, grateful. However, she shook her head. "Thanks, Big Fella," she said softly. "But I need to be here right now. Let Mole take over." She was about to say more when a sudden "beep" from the heart monitor brought her head around. There was a glitch in the line measuring Alec's heart rate, a small secondary spike that the equipment didn't like.

"Doc?" Max called. The X4 came over from where he'd been cleaning the surgical instruments, stethoscope in hand. Kneeling beside the cot, he listened to his patient's heart -- and the look in his keen blue eyes said it all.

"What?" Max asked, choking back the fear in her voice. "What is it?"

"Not good," Doc said grimly, shaking his head. "I was hoping ..." He glanced up at Max sympathetically. "We knew it was a long shot."

"What's wrong?" Max demanded.

"Sounds like the sutures are leaking," Doc said. "His chest's slowly filling with blood."

"Can you fix him?"

The X4's eyes locked with hers. "Max," he said quietly. "I think we need to let him go."

Max knew Doc was right -- that Alec would never want to be butchered alive with repeated surgeries, especially when the outcome was most likely negative. Joshua was silently weeping again, but she could tell from the look on his face that he agreed with the medic.

Still ...

"Keep him breathing," she ordered, standing up and moving toward the door. "Just ... keep him breathing."

"Max?" Joshua pleaded.

"I've got an idea," she said, her mind racing. "But I need a little bit of time."

"Max, he could arrest at any moment," Doc said.

"Just keep him breathing, damn it!" she screamed as she ran out of the room, nearly knocking Joshua over in her rush.

The dog man and the medic could do nothing but stare after her, wondering what on Earth she could do that would possibly help the dying young transgenic.

*****

"Logan," Max said. "I need your help."

Logan Cale's back stiffened at the sound of her voice, then he slowly turned his wheelchair around, abandoning for the moment the email he was composing. His apartment was dark, all of the windows shuttered, even though the day outside had been one of Seattle's rare sunny ones. A wicked growth of stubble on his chin, unkempt dirty hair, and huge dark circles under his eyes made him look years older than the last time Max had seen him -- in that alley with a gun pointed at Alec's head. An almost empty bottle of Scotch and a glass sat on the desk, the smell of liquor and stale sweat hanging heavy in the air.

"Max ..." he said cautiously, his voice rough. "I must say I didn't expect you to be paying me a visit any time soon. Figured you'd be too busy with your new boyfriend."

Max shrugged. "I never meant for us to be enemies, Logan."

He ignored that. "You say you need my help," he said. "So, I should what? Forgive and forget? Pretend you and your genetically enhanced super stud didn't cuckold me? What's he got that I don't, Max, besides cat genes? A couple of extra inches courtesy of the Manticore techs?"

Max looked at the floor. "It wasn't like that," she answered in a low voice. "With Alec and me ... it just sort of happened ... like it was some kind of fate."

"Fuck fate!" Logan screamed, banging his fist down on the desk top so hard the glass sitting near the edge teetered and crashed to the floor.

She jumped, her insides clenching. She'd expected him to be angry, but not like this ... not so vicious.

"You were mine!" Logan wailed. "We waited over two years, Max! Two fucking years to be together. And then we finally had it all. We were free to love one another. Our dreams were coming true, or at least mine were. But apparently you'd been dreaming about someone else. Am I right? How long had this been going on, Max? Before the Breeding Cult battle? Before the Terminal City siege? Had you been fucking him that morning I saw the two of you leave your apartment together last spring?"

"No!" Max cried. "Logan, Alec never touched me. He knew I loved only you. But then--"

"--you had sex with me and I didn't measure up," Logan said coldly. "So you went after what was in his pants instead. And, of course, Alec was ready, willing, and ..." Logan chuckled nastily, his smile ugly, "able." He said the last word with a sneer.

"He loves me, too, Logan." Max offered, as if that would make a difference to the demented man.

"I know that!" Logan screamed, his eyes filling with tears as his voice cracked. "I've always know that! From the moment I first laid eyes on Alec I could see the chemistry between the two of you ... the way he looked at you ..."

"Alec never tried to take me away from you, Logan," Max declared hotly. "He could have, but he didn't. He respected our love until--"

"Until you gave him the green light," Logan finished for her.

Max hung her head again. She couldn't deny it.

"And then he was all over you," he said quietly. " ... in you ..."

"It wasn't like that," she repeated, thinking how that phrase had practically become her motto.

"He got you pregnant, for God's sake! Of course it was 'like' that!" Logan turned away and stared at the computer screen. "What do you want, Max?" he asked, his words almost mechanical. "I heard there was a shooting in the market yesterday -- that there were casualties." He glanced up, and the hopeful look in his eyes made Max feel sick. "Is he dead?"

"No. But he's dying."

"Good."

"Logan, Alec needs expert medical care, the kind only Manticore can give. He's got a damaged heart and the hospitals here in Seattle wouldn't be able to help him. They don't have the capability of handling X5 physiology."

"What does that have to do with me?" Eyes Only asked, his voice colder than Max had ever heard it.

"You know how to reach Donald Lydecker," Max said. "I know you do."

"Hey," Logan tossed back. "You and Alec are the ones working for the man. Don't you have his home phone number?"

"No," Max admitted. "Lydecker always contacted us. I've no way to get hold of him."

"So," Logan said, leaning back a bit in the wheelchair and steepling his fingers, although still not looking at her. "You want me to get hold of Donald and tell him what?"

"Tell him to come and get Alec," Max said, forcing the difficult words out in a rush. "Tell him Alec's dying and needs Manticore doctors."

"Let him die," Logan muttered.

"Logan!" Max couldn't believe the beautiful man she'd once loved so much could have become so coldhearted and cruel. "Alec's young and healthy. He's got his whole life ahead of him. And Terminal City needs him badly."

"You mean you need him badly," Logan smirked.

"I need him badly," Max admitted. "Logan, if you ever loved me ... please, help me save him."

"Max, a couple of days ago I tried my damnedest to kill that X5 bastard." He swiveled around to face her. The tears streaming down his cheeks frightened Max -- but not so much as the look of utter hatred in his fanatical blue eyes. "Why in God's name would I help you save that piece of betraying shit now?"

"Fine," Max said, swallowing the lump in her throat. "But don't think I'm ever going to forget this, Logan. We were through before. Now ... I guess we really are enemies."

"Better hurry, Max," Logan said, smiling through his tears. "Maybe you can get in one last fuck with your new lover before he dies."

Max clenched her jaw and forced herself to leave, thinking that she'd been right afterall about Logan, that week before Christmas -- he really wasn't the man she thought she'd known.

*****

Night was approaching, darkness slowly overtaking the light of day, a time Terminal City seemed its loneliest. "You need my help?" a voice said from the shadows.

Max jumped. Deep in thought on her way back to the infirmary, she'd been caught totally off guard. However, even as her racing heart slowed, a feeling of hope rose in her chest.

"'Deck," she breathed, her eyes raking the colonel, taking in his familiar weathered features, military fatigues, and black leather jacket. He looked better than the last time she'd seen him -- had regained some of the weight lost during his incarceration. But his blue eyes were sparkling in a way that worried her.

"I heard about 494," he said quietly. "My deepest sympathies."

"He's not dead yet," Max snapped. But then a horrible thought occurred to her and she raised her head, looking down the street toward the infirmary. Her eyes came back to the colonel, questioning.

"No," Lydecker said softly. "But he's as good as."

"What do you know about anything?" Max had to ask. "You got spies in here?"

Lydecker just smiled.

"You could help him, couldn't you?" Max said. "If you wanted to."

"Perhaps," Lydecker conceded. "With prompt, intensive medical care back at New Manticore he might have a chance."

"What's it going to cost me?" Max said, getting straight to the point. "You take care of Alec in return for ... what?"

"Your services," Lydecker said bluntly.

"Alec and I already tried your New Manticore missions on for size," she returned. "It wasn't a good fit. Name something else."

"I don't mean your professional services," Lydecker said quietly, his blue eyes now gleaming with something Max told herself couldn't be there. "I mean your personal ones.You have my wife's eyes. Remember?" He reached out a hand toward her face.

Max slapped the offending fingers away, and spun back in a fighting stance. "Touch me and you'll die!" she spat.

"Perhaps," Lydecker conceded. "But then so will he. It's the only way, Max. I'll do my best to save X5-494. However, in return, you'll come with me, and for one night -- you'll do anything I say."

Max's eyes widened with horror at what he was propositioning. "You want me to be your whore?"

"No," Lydecker replied calmly. "I want you to love me. I've always wanted that, Max. During those weeks in the Cult's cell ... during those weeks of torture ... it all became clear to me, what I truly desire in life. You."

"I already love Alec."

"Fine," Lydecker said, his face oddly impassive. "Love him until he dies then." He turned to go.

"Wait!" Max called out desperately. "If I say yes, you'll fix him?"

"We'll do our best," Lydecker promised, looking back at her over his shoulder.

Max bit down on her lower lip, fighting the nausea rising in her throat at what she had to say. "It's a deal. Save Alec ... and you can have me for a night."

Lydecker nodded, and pulled a cell phone from his jacket pocket. He spoke a few words, and moments later Max heard the sound of a helicopter approaching. Haunting visions of Brin, lying on a park bench, dying, as a Manticore chopper hovered overhead filled her mind. She'd lost Brin anyway ...

What would Alec think of this?

But the chopper was landing on the roof of the main TC building now. Lydecker handed her the cell. "I suggest you call your people and clear the way," he said.

Max complied, telling Doc to let the Manticore soldiers take Alec. She then watched with Lydecker from the street as they carried 494 on a stretcher to the chopper, and loaded him on board. A minute later the whirlybird rose with a roar into the air, banked sharply, and took off at a high rate of speed headed east.

She watched in silence until the helicopter's blinking lights vanished in the deepening dusk. I never got to say goodbye.

Lydecker turned to her, a smile on his face. And then he gently touched her cheek again.