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"Hey, big guy," Alec said gently from the doorway. "Long time, no see."

Joshua, his back turned, had been bending over to pick up some clothes off the floor of his quarters. At the words, he slowly straightened, and Alec swore he could almost literally see the hair on the shaggy dog man's head stand slightly on end.

Then his friend looked back over his shoulder, blue eyes wide with what the X5 realized, too late, was pure fear.

"Nooo!" Joshua shrieked, throwing his hands up in front of his face and cowering. "Go away! Go away! Not Alec! Not Alec!"

Damn, I didn't mean to give the big guy a heart attack!

"Joshua!" Max shouted, pushing in front of Alec and running across the small room to grab their canine-like friend by the arms. "Joshua, it's all right. It really is Alec. He's not dead. Lydecker lied to me. It was a trick. Alec was hurt real bad, and Manticore tried to keep him, but he escaped." Tears were running down her cheeks as she forced Joshua to look into her eyes -- to see the truth there. "Alec's back, big fella. He's really, really back."

Joshua tore his gaze from Max's and stared at the impossible figure still standing in the doorway.

Alec swallowed the lump in his throat and said huskily, "I missed you, Josh. I missed all of you so much."

That did it.

"Alec!" Joshua wailed. And suddenly, before Alec could even brace himself, he found himself enveloped in the biggest, most rib-bruising hug he'd ever had in his life. "Alec," Joshua sobbed against his friend's t-shirt, burying his big head in Alec's shoulder, then sniffing his face and hair as if making certain his friend was all there.

Alec didn't usually like people touching him -- avoiding deliberate physical contact other than sex, fighting, or the briefest of handshakes. But right now, Joshua's hug felt as good as anything he'd ever experienced, the love the dog man was expressing for his long lost brother so intense it was almost tangible.

Without hesitation, the young transgenic returned the embrace, wrapping his own arms around Joshua's huge trembling body. "God, I missed you, big guy," he said huskily into the front of that extra-large size flannel shirt.

Joshua gave one long last sniff to Alec's hair and nodded. "Cat still in cocktail," he said, looking back at Max, an absurd grin on his face now. "Cat and sex. Max and Alec already been gettin' busy?"

Max, a faint blush tinging her cheeks, cleared her throat. "He showed up on my doorstep last night -- or rather, at the foot of my bed," she said by way of explanation.

Joshua set Alec back, his paw-like hands still grasping the X5's upper arms. Looking his friend over from head to toe, he shook his head. "Alec all right now?"

"I'm fine, Josh," Alec said honestly. "Just hungry, sore, and -- he glanced over at Max, a mischievous twinkle in his eye -- in need of a good night's sleep and a change of clothes."

A light bulb seemed to suddenly go on over Joshua's head as his eyes lit up. Grabbing Alec by the hand, he dragged the X5 across the room to a dresser. "Joshua kept all of Alec's stuff," he declared, pulling open a drawer. "Clothes!"

Alec's mouth dropped open. "You mean you didn't get rid of my things? Even after all this time?" He turned to Max.

She shrugged, a "don't ask me" look on her face.

Alec checked the drawer, and pulled out a pair of Levis. He also saw his boots, and two pairs of his sneakers were against the wall over in the corner. And then he remembered something else. Digging back beneath a small pile of boxer shorts and CDs, he triumphantly pulled out a wallet that was still bulging with bills.

"I thought you always carried your cash on you," Max said dryly, seeing what he'd come up with.

"Not all of it," Alec said offhandedly as he quickly thumbed through the money, counting it. A big (slightly greedy) grin lit up his face. But then he had one other thought. Throwing all of his attention to Max, he said, "Tell me you kept my bike, too."

Max rolled her eyes at the ever-practical, pragmatic, X5. "I kept your bike," she assured him. "For old times sake. It's safe and sound with my baby down in the motor pool."

"Ha!" Alec shouted, wondering how this day could possibly get any better. "Thank you, guys! Just ... thank you!"

"Hey," Max said quietly. "You're welcome. Oh, and in case I forgot to say it, welcome home, pretty boy."

"Welcome home, Alec," Joshua repeated, enveloping his back-from-the-dead brother in yet another bone-crushing hug.

*****

As Alec and Max walked side-by-side through the litter-strewn streets of Terminal City toward the front gates, Alec shook his head in amazement. He couldn't get over the fact that Joshua had kept all of his stuff like that. It's not something he, himself, would ever have done. Hell, when Biggs had been killed, he'd gone through his friend's things the very next day, kept what he wanted himself, sold what he could, and given away the rest. Sentimentality wasn't something Manticore had encouraged. Where Joshua had come up with such a big dose of the emotion he hadn't a clue.

Oh well, Alec thought as the gates loomed ahead. At least I've got clean underwear. Between that, and showering and shaving at Max's place, he could almost ignore the nagging ache in his bones and the weariness in his muscles. But I really could use about six hours of real sleep.

Blinking tired eyes, for a moment Alec thought he was seeing things as they approached TC's main entrance.

"What's with all the attention?" he asked, waving a hand at the contingency of Sector Police standing guard by the fence. The two officers he remembered had multiplied into at least ten. He looked quizzically at Max -- and realized she was avoiding his eyes.

"Max ... what's wrong?"

She sighed heavily and shrugged. "I suppose you're going to find out sooner or later."

Alec tensed. He'd heard that line before, and, as far as he was concerned, it was never followed by good news.

"Max ...?" His voice carried an undercurrent of warning.

She stood very still, just looking at the policemen. That's when Alec also suddenly noticed the decided lack of any other people in the area across the street at the TC Mall. There had always been at least a few customers milling about by this time in the morning, and it occurred to him that Joshua should be minding his booth instead of back in his apartment.

A cold chill ran down Alec's spine. Dix and Luke were nowhere to be seen ... or Mole.

He spun on Max, his hazel-green eyes narrowed.

"After you got shot," Max said, her voice strangely flat, "--after we thought you'd been killed ... they wanted revenge."

"'They', meaning ...?"

"Mole, Joshua, Dix, Luke, the X5s ... some of the kids you'd been teaching, or 'mentoring' as you called it." She looked up at him, brown eyes wide. "Alec, I never told you before how important you were ... are ... to us." Her glance shifted. "I didn't want you getting cockier than you already were."

"Don't worry, Max," Alec said, his tone clipped. "Lydecker did a pretty good number on my so-called cockiness, put my ego in the basement along with the rest of me actually. A little praise from you won't turn me into Rupert Murdoch."

She took another deep breath, ignoring his self-pity. "They wanted revenge," she continued. "Mole led the attack. Twelve Steelheads were killed. We sustained two injured, none dead."

"And let me guess," Alec said, suddenly seeing the whole picture. "Not that I'm not flattered and all, but after your idiotic little pay back raid, all those nice city doors that had been opened for the poor abused mutants suddenly slammed closed."

"We thought you were dead, Alec!" Max shouted, her hands balling into fists. "The Steelheads had come into our home and killed one of our leaders in cold blood! What did you expect us to do?"

"I'd expect you to get even," Alec said levelly. "But to also be smart about it. Stagin' a full scale raid was stupid, Max." He looked again at the all-but-deserted mall. "How bad is it?" he asked in a low voice.

"Bad," Max conceded. "Clemente won't even talk to me any more. He says he can't trust me. The TC Freaks have been pretty much officially labeled an outlaw gang by the police, deemed no better than the Furies or the Steelheads or the Korean Clan. The city even revoked all of our sector passes, so now we have to sneak and creep around the checkpoints."

"The council seat?" Alec asked, his eyes still on the building across the street that he'd worked so hard to turn into a money-making entity for his people. He glanced down at Max. "The one thing you said made us legitimate, even more than the right to vote?"

"We can still vote," Max said in a small voice, "in the general elections."

"Max! The seat?"

"Gone," she said, throwing her hands up in the air. "Revoked the day after the raid. Mayor Steckler made a big deal out of it, too. He said it had been a mistake in the first place."

"Maybe it was," Alec replied softly.

"What?"

"Max, we're never gonna be like other people. You know that. Maybe we do need to be a clan or a gang instead of tryin' to fit in where we'll never be wanted. But this--" He gestured toward the empty stores. "Max, how could you let this happen? We were building something here -- makin' a nice profit. Did you even keep up the loan payments to Logan?"

"We missed one," Max said quietly. "But Logan doesn't own the building -- yet."

"But he soon will, won't he?" Alec said darkly. "I mean, it doesn't look like the place is exactly rakin' in the cash. Has everyone deserted the project?

"Joshua still sells his paintings," Max offered. "Rita gets him buyers. And sometimes Dix and Luke's sculptures ..." Her voice trailed off.

"Coffee shop's still open I see."

"Gem mostly just caters to our own people now," Max replied tiredly. A little smile. "And I sure wish you'd left behind some notes about where you got that good coffee. I spent one whole afternoon down on the wharf trying to find your contact, but had no luck. The brew sucks, and the doughnuts are always stale -- secondhand stuff from Little Debbie's is the best we could do."

"Max," Alec asked, his voice still oddly quiet. "Why didn't you stop them?" He reached out and took her hand in his. "Why didn't you keep Mole and the others from makin' such a huge mistake? I feel like, in a way, it's my fault this happened -- but I know it's not. Not really ..."

"You're right," Max said. "I should have stopped them. Looking back, I see that now. But at the time ..." Her hand tightened around his fingers and Alec looked down into her eyes. "Alec, I'd lost you, right when I'd finally admitted to myself that I loved you. I felt like my heart had been cut out. For awhile, I didn't care about anyone or anything. And, when I finally got my act together again it was too late. The damage had been done." Another little smile. "Like I always told you. I'm not leadership material. This just proves it."

"All this proves is that you're human," Alec said, the last traces of his anger evaporating as he realized how horrible Max felt about all of this, not to mention the fact it had really happened because of how much she loved him. "Don't worry," he said softly. "Somehow we'll fix this."

"There's Zack," she said, still holding his hand tightly as she nodded in the direction of X5-599 who was striding down the street on the other side of the fence toward Gem's coffee shop.

"All right," Alec said with a sigh of his own. "Let's get this over with and figure out just who's top dog around here now. You know Max, I spent a few sleepless nights imagining that, with me supposedly dead, you'd end up back with Logan. But I never gave a thought to brother Zack."

"We're not like that," Max bristled as Alec held open the door of the coffee shop for her.

"Did you tell him about me?"

"Yes," Max replied. She eyed him sideways. "And besides, even if Zack hadn't known before, after this morning I imagine my brother has a pretty good idea that you were, and are, my lover. I don't roll around naked in bed with just any man, even when I'm in heat, at least not any more."

"Point taken," Alec said under his breath as he slid into a booth to sit opposite a decidedly dour looking X5-599. "I'm special."

"You're special," Max affirmed as she took her place beside him.