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"How long have you known where Sandeman is?" Max asked quietly when they reached their bikes -- the first words she'd spoken to him since leaving the embassy.

"Do you mean how long have I been keepin' secrets from you?" Alec clarified. He knew he probably should be contrite, but instead he met her eyes boldly. Long ago he'd learned that Max didn't want him to back down, not really ... not even when he was wrong.

"I mean how long have you been betraying me?"

"Max, that's harsh." The hurt in Alec's voice was genuine, but he was ready to defend himself. "I got to thinkin' about it," he said, "my mysterious caller, after we put a damper on the snake-cult's annual Christmas party and rescued Logan in '22. Sandeman was the one big plot dangler in the story of our lives ... the one mystery we never solved. Even though the guy was invisible, it seemed to me that somehow he had to have a hand in what happened." Alec jammed fists into the pockets of his jeans and regarded her with cocky self-assurance, his hazel-green eyes candid. "In other words, it bugged me."

"So then you remembered those strange orders you'd been given three years ago?" Max said. "Why didn't you tell me about it then?"

"Because there was nothin' to tell," Alec said easily. "Not really. It was all just a hunch. It wasn't until Lydecker sent you off on that wild goose chase to Austria and we found your mother's grave that I began to think it might be more important than we'd ever thought to find this Sandeman guy. I mean, if he'd used his own daughter as an incubator for the 'special one' ... if he was that much of a fanatic ... we probably ought to pin him down." He shrugged. "It wasn't hard to get a roster of French embassy personnel. But I've gotta admit, when I saw Rene Sandeman on the list I felt like I'd just fallen into the Twilight Zone. I mean, why hadn't I checked it out years ago? And why hadn't the guy bothered to change his name? Think of all the trouble it might have saved us, Max ... all the killing that could have been prevented if we'd just found the old guy and gone to him to begin with instead of dancin' with White all that time."

"So," Max said, "Why didn't you tell me right away when you found out Sandeman was at the embassy?" Dark eyebrows arched, she was watching him closely.

"Because I didn't want to lose you," Alec said levelly. "Your blood was already makin' 'maxine" for the ordinaries. The cult was finished, at least the most militant faction. The real urgency of findin' Sandeman was gone. But I was still afraid that if you went to him, he'd take you away from me."

"Why would you think that?" Max asked, honestly not understanding.

Alec finally lost the attitude and looked down at the ground. "Because I wanted to be your only family," he mumbled. "I was afraid that if you found 'Daddy' you'd go off on one of those idealistic emotional tangents of yours and I'd be left behind."

Max shook her head at that, and Alec felt like a fool.

"Can you forgive me?" he asked.

She looked at him for a very long time. "Maybe," she said at last. "But whether I forgive you or not, I don't think I'll ever be able to trust you again, Alec. That part of our love is broken beyond repair."

And with those damning words, she turned away from him, climbed on her Ninja, and drove away.

*****

Alec followed Max like a lost puppy back to Terminal City because he had nowhere else to go. Chastised, chagrined, and put in his place more soundly than he'd ever been before in his life, the X5 stood beside Max with his head hanging as Colonel Donald Lydecker regarded him with triumphant greedy eyes.

"He's been gone too long," the colonel said. "He'll require reindoctrination."

"And punishment," Melissa Brown added, batting her mascara laden eyelashes and adjusting the bright yellow millinery creation that was perched on top of her slicked back dark hair. She raked Alec's body with her eyes. "I also want DNA samples taken -- immediately -- in case the boy decides to kill himself or bolt again or something equally stupid rather than do his duty."

"I'll do my duty," Alec said, looking up at his captors at last ("captors" because he knew damn well he was a prisoner no matter what Max chose to call the allegiance she'd made with Manticore). "I came back of my own free will didn't I?"

"You came back because of her," Lydecker said, pointing his chin at Max who was standing staunchly and silently beside her mate.

"And just in time, too," Ms. Brown said snidely. "We were about to assign 452 a new breeding partner." She eyed Max. "In fact, I'm wondering if we still shouldn't separate the two of you."

Both Alec and Max stiffened at her ominous words. Alec had expected to be reprimanded, punished even, but he hadn't expected to be treated like livestock. Wasn't he still a free citizen of the United States? He opened his mouth to protest, but Max suddenly grabbed his wrist -- hard. Shut up! the painful embrace warned.

Alec swallowed his words of indignation and waited.

Melissa Brown turned to the colonel, speaking as if the two X5s weren't even present. "My father once had a pair of favorite hunting dogs," she said primly. "A breeding male and a bitch. They were best friends, mates, inseparable. As a team they usually worked flawlessly, but every once in awhile their affection for one another interfered with the hunt."

"What did your father do?" Lydecker asked, seemingly honestly curious.

Ms. Brown shrugged. "Eventually we had to put one of them to sleep."

Lydecker turned to the pair of X5s. "Take 494 to the medical facility," he ordered Max, "and have the implant done as well as a complete physical. Then have him report to X5-599 for assignment and re-training."

"What about my supposed reindoctrination?" Alec had to ask, memories of agonizing laser beam torture rising in his mind.

"He means you'll have to requalify in firearms and martial arts," Max said in a low voice. "And pass the physical. That's all." She gave him a little smile. "It's not quite as bad as before, even though sometimes it seems like it is."

"And don't forget the DNA samples," Melissa Brown called after them down the hallway.

Alec suppressed a shudder, and only Max's presence beside him kept him from doing something fatally stupid.

*****

"You know," Max said as she waited with him in a partitioned off area of TC's medical complex, "That woman scares me for some reason, and I can't quite figure out why."

Alec made a wry face. "I think it's those hats," he said. "There's somethin' really creepy about 'em."

Max nodded in agreement. Alec had a point.

The two X5s were making small talk while waiting for the doctor. Alec had already filled out several pages of paperwork regarding his medical status over the past year.

The Manticore medic finally entered -- an older brown-haired woman with dead eyes that Max vaguely remembered treating her after her heart transplant back at the old base. Apparently Lydecker had recovered some of his original "people."

"Take off your clothes," the doctor said brusquely to the patient. Her eyes locked with Alec's and she smiled just a little bit. "All of them."

Max wasn't really surprised when Alec simply smiled right back and cheerfully kicked off his boots, pulled off his t-shirt, unzipped his jeans, and skimmed both pants and boxers off to stand completely nude and unashamed in front of the woman. I always knew the smart ass was an exhibitionist at heart, Max couldn't help thinking as she found herself appreciating her lover's fine physical assets.

The exam took a good hour with the doctor checking Alec's vital signs plus administering an EKG and EEG, taking blood samples, and doing a relatively complete neurological work-up that he more-or-less passed with flying colors.

"You still have seizures," the woman said, obviously stating a fact as she read the EEG patterns.

"Sometimes," Alec replied.

"How often?" Max asked.

Her partner shrugged. "Now and then. The Tryptophan usually works, but, as they say, I don't leave home without it."

"We'll put you on a tighter treatment regime," the doctor said, making a notation in his file. "Your EEG is showing irregularities in keeping with an epileptic pattern. I'd like to see fewer spikes in both lobes."

"Fine by me," Alec yawned. He was sitting on the edge of the examining table and banging his feet against the metal cabinet below. It was rather cold in the room, Max noticed -- but Alec, with his revved up body heat, didn't seem bothered by it any more than he was by his nudity. "Hey," he said impatiently. "Are we almost done here? I'm gettin' bored."

"Almost," the woman doctor said. "Your DNA workup will take a few days, but I see no symptoms that the chromosomal strands are deteriorating." She reached into the pocket of her lab coat and withdrew a small specimen container. "But I do need one more sample."

Alec's brows drew together. "What sample?" he said. "I already pee-ed in a cup for you."

"Semen," she said curtly. Then she looked at Max. "I'll leave you two alone. When you're done give the specimen to the nurse, get dressed, and report to room five for the cessium chip implant."

When the doctor was gone, Max cleared her throat. "Do you need any help?" she asked, feeling a bit ridiculous asking him the question.

"Nope," Alec said, hopping off the table and reaching for his shorts.

"What are you doing?" Max asked, mildly alarmed.

"Gettin' dressed," he replied. "I'm done."

"No," she said. "You're not."

"Max," he said, "I'm not givin' 'em my spunk."

"Why not!" she snapped. "It's not like you ever have any trouble producing it!"

"Yeah, when it's my choice!" he shot right back. "But I have a little bit of a problem when someone demands it while holdin' a gun to my head."

Alec had his jeans on now and was wriggling into his dark grey t-shirt. Then he picked up his shoes in one hand, grabbed Max's arm with the other, and dragged her out into the hallway. "Where's room five," he asked the expectant looking nurse, a non-transgenic regular army type who's short hair and no-nonsense attitude shouted "career military." She pointed to the right.

Alec headed that way.

"Soldier!" the nurse called out. "I need your specimen."

"I'm not a vending machine!" Alec yelled and kept walking. "Go fuck someone else for your specimen, lady!"

For some odd reason, Max had never been more proud of her man. If only I'd had the courage to stand up to them like that at the beginning, she thought sadly. If only I hadn't sent Alec away.