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This is a stand-alone story, a scene following the events of Max Allan Collins' DARK ANGEL novel SKIN GAME, and incorporating information revealed in D.A. Stern's THE EYES ONLY DOSSIER -- author's note

Photo courtesy of Jensen Ackles World

*****

"Not that I'm complainin'," Alec said, pulling his chair up to the table and unfolding a napkin, "but why the wining and dining?" He nodded to the uncorked decanter of wine sitting in an ice bucket on the sideboard, and the steaming spaghetti in a bowl on the white linen table cloth. Along with the delicious smelling meat sauce, homemade rolls, and fresh salad, it was a meal fit for a king, especially in this day and age of short supplies, and his mouth was watering. But still ... he had his suspicions.

"Can't three friends have a nice supper together?" Logan countered.

"Come on, Logan," Alec said with a knowing smile as he reached for the bowl of pasta and helped himself to a liberal portion. "Two's company and three's a crowd. To what do I owe the honor of being invited to one of Logan Cale's infamous pasta parties?" He glanced at Max, a glib comment about "threesomes" on his tongue, but one look at her eyes and he resisted the innuendo.

"Hey," Max said sharply. "The man's making a nice gesture. The least you could do is thank him, not act like he's offering you some kind of bribe."

Alec's hazel-green eyes collided with Logan's blue ones across the table. "A bribe?" Alec said, a dimple accompanying the cocky grin. "Now, we're gettin' somewhere." He rubbed his hands together in anticipation.

"I said it wasn't a bribe!" Max protested. "Why do you have to twist everything around, Alec? I guess it's because your own sick little mind can't comprehend people just sitting down as friends without ulterior motives."

Logan held up his hand. "Max," he said. "Stop. Stop trying to cover for me. And stop beating the guy up when he's right."

Alec smirked at Max. "Would you pass the sauce, please?" he said, holding out a hand for the bowl. "And the rolls too while you're at it?"

Max thrust the bowl of steaming meat sauce at the other X5 with an audible huff, followed by the roll basket which she set down on the table top with such vehemence two of the rolls bounced onto the linen.

This is getting interesting, Alec thought to himself as he watched Max out of the corner of his eye while buttering the bread. They wanted something from him, and they wanted it bad. But he had to wonder why all the fuss. Why didn't Max just ask him if she needed a favor? She had to know by now that he'd most likely do anything for her.

Logan cleared his throat, and Alec's attention shifted to the older man. He couldn't help noticing that Max wasn't eating, although Logan had taken a taste or two.

"Max," Alec said levelly, still looking at Logan. "What is it?" He took a bite of the soft roll, savoring the taste of its buttery flakiness, followed by a sip of white wine. He really was extremely hungry, just like all the others trapped in Terminal City, and no matter what Max and Logan wanted from him he wasn't going to waste this great meal.

"We need to ask you some stuff about Manticore," Max said, her eyes averted and for some reason finding the beige wallpaper behind Logan's head fascinating. "I know you don't like to talk about it, and I don't blame you, but Logan needs some information and we think you can help."

Alec knew he should be relieved. This wasn't so bad. It wasn't as if Max was asking him to surrender to Clemente for Ben's crimes or any of the other wicked scenarios his imagination had been conjuring. But still ... he wasn't as hungry as he'd been a few minutes before. The mention of Manticore had a way of doing that to him -- taking away his appetite.

"Why me?" he asked quietly, setting his fork aside. "There are other X5s in Terminal City who'd gladly spill everything they know for another can of beans, let alone a spread like this."

"Are you saying you don't want to talk about it?" Logan said. "About Manticore?"

"Depends," Alec replied cautiously. "On what you want to know. I may not be much help to you, not if you're wanting what I suspect you do. Like I said, you'd be better off askin' someone else."

"I need to know about the X5Rs," Logan said. "What they are, how they were trained, what kind of assignments they were likely to be given ..."

Alec just stared at him.

"The members of Max's squad who didn't escape in '09 and the squad's twins were all re-designated internally at Manticore as X5Rs," Logan said. "The 'R' meant reconditioned."

"And now you want to know more about Lane and Devon and Keema and Jewel, right?" Alec said, nodding knowingly as eyes narrowed. "Oh, and by the way," he stood up and tossed his napkin down on the table, the meal over as far as he was concerned. "The 'R' also stood for reindoctrinated. Thanks for dinner. But I'm suddenly not hungry any more."

Max was on her feet too, her hand on his shoulder, gently holding him back as he stalked toward the door that would return him to the tunnel and Terminal City. "Alec, please."

He spun on her, green eyes flashing. "I already told you, Lane and the others went on to Quantico in seventeen. I didn't. I never saw them again. I have no idea what their assignments were or are."

"But you do know how they were trained," Logan said earnestly. "How they think. What they're capable of."

"Alec, please help us with this?" Max implored.

Alec looked down into her eyes. It was his undoing. In spite of the fact Max could never love him ... never look at him the way she did Logan ... he still cared deeply about her.

"I know it's difficult," Max said softly, her hand now holding his as she led him almost against his will into the living room. "I know you don't like to remember Manticore. Neither do I. But it might be a big help to Logan. You could be preventing a high level assassination."

"You think one of my fellow reindoctrinees is about to score?" Alec asked, his interest perked in spite of his anger.

"We think Jewel might be going to carry out orders to assassinate the Russian president, Nikolai Kolankov."

"Who's orders!?" Alec snorted. "Manticore's gone. You're tellin' me that Lydecker's still really got people in the field besides his own personal retrieval squad?"

"You saw Lane and Devon yourself," Logan replied quietly. "You know Lydecker came here recruiting X5s. And you know he wanted you back especially badly. You're one of the X5R series, Alec, one of the specially trained assassins. You're the only X5 in Terminal City who knows how the other X5Rs were conditioned, their instincts, their motivations, what was done to them."

"News flash, Logan," Alec said bitterly. "I flunked out of the program. I was never deployed. I was considered too much of a rebel ... a loner. Too 'out for myself.' Not a team player. They put me through hell twice tryin' to 'fix' me, and in the end they gave up." He glanced at Max. "You once said I lie so well I'm terrifying. Well, if I hadn't learned to lie I'd be dead because Manticore would have put me down if they'd ever known what I really was inside -- that I wasn't the killer I was bred, born, and trained to be. But I learned how to fool them in reindoctrination, and when they sent me to psy-ops after Ben pulled his serial killer shit it saved me because the mind shredders like Mia saw in my head that I wasn't a psycho killer .. wasn't a killer at all in fact." His brow knit at the memory. "Guess I was lucky in a funny way. 494's biggest flaw, his soul as you would probably call it, not only kept me at Manticore where I was freed, but also probably kept me from goin' nuts like Ben."

"But you had years of the same training they did, Alec," Max said, pulling him down into a chair and dropping to her knees beside him on the floor, her brown eyes earnestly holding his. "Please, help us."

"What do you want to know?" Alec asked desperately. "I don't think I can help. I--"

"Start at the beginning," Logan suggested quickly, relief obvious on his face now that X5-494 seemed to be willing to cooperate afterall. Alec knew that if Logan ever found out the truth of why he was giving this up ... why he couldn't deny Max ... that relief would be gone in an instant. But Logan didn't know.

"The beginning?"

"You were in a squad just like mine, raised just like me," Max helped. "Then thirteen of us escaped. What happened to you and the others after '09, Alec? Start there."

Alec swallowed hard. Logan handed him a glass of wine. Absently, he sipped the Riesling.

"I was ten years old when you and your fellow traitors bolted," he said slowly. And off Max's stern look, "Well, that's what you were considered -- traitors. But you knew that."

"Do you still consider me a traitor?" Max asked.

"Truth?" Alec met her question head-on. "Yeah. I do. You have no idea Max--"

"Then tell me," she said quietly. "Tell me now. I know it hurts, Alec. But we need to know what happened to you guys afterwards. Dr. Adriana Vertes said you were 'simplified'." She shuddered slightly at the word. So did Alec.

He took another swallow of the wine.

"Would you rather I make that a Scotch?" Logan asked quietly.

Alec nodded, and Eyes Only went to the liquor cabinet, returning with a glass half filled with brown swirling liquid. Alec accepted the stronger drink gratefully. It had been a long time since he'd had a good Scotch, and the feel of its burn in his throat was surprisingly soothing.

"The X5s, all of us, were supposed to be officers," Alec said slowly. "We were going to be the next generation of military leaders, and were being trained from birth for the responsibility."

"I remember some of the classes," Max said. "Psyche courses, how to motivate people, how to lead ..."

"But after you and your little Rugrat friends bolted, everything changed. Most of the X5s were just yanked from the officer training and put into platoons, trained more for field work, taught how to obey rather than give orders. But with my kind ... your twins ... it went different." Alec licked dry lips and looked toward the boarded up window of Logan's apartment. It was after dark now, but hopefully no light would be visible from the street ... no sign of Eyes Only's newest headquarters.

"Go on," Max prompted. "How was it different? You were put through reindoctrination, right?"

Alec hung his head. He figured that didn't need explaining. She knew first hand the pain and brainwashing that entailed. Undergoing it as an adult, Max had at least had a fighting chance to resist. But as kids ... Children ...

"Max," he said, his voice husky. "I don't remember anything at all about my childhood. Nothing. I used to, I think. Hell, I had to have had a childhood, right?" He looked at her, his hazel-green eyes wide and painfully innocent. "But I don't remember a damn thing. I was ten years old in '09. My memory begins when I was about eleven, after the reindoctrination. Sometimes I have nightmares, about guards coming in the middle of the night and dragging me out of bed, bein' strapped down on a table, screaming ... You know how they used the lasers ..."

"I know," Max said, meaning it.

"After that, they put all the twins and the ones of your group who hadn't escaped into a special platoon." He smiled slightly at a thought. "In spite bein' the ones most likely to exhibit 'aberrant behavior' we were also considered the best of the X5s. We would have been the elite officers if that program had continued, leaders of the nation's armed forces today." His eyes clouded slightly. "But instead we were trained for special operations, assassinations, taught everything there was to know about how to track down our quarry and kill them ... trained to be self sufficient ... work on our own but always under the direction of a human."

Alec sighed and downed the last of the Scotch. Without asking, Logan took the glass and brought back a refill.

"Remember how the guards always stood around holdin' machine guns?" Alec said. "How afraid the ordinaries were of us even with us on their mental leashes and kept in cages?"

Max nodded again. As a child that had always made her wonder. Why the guns everywhere? Why had they sometimes been pointed at her?

"So," Logan said, "You trained with the other twins until '17? METT-T, Mission Enemy Terrain and Troops protocol? Special Ops stuff? Martial arts? Weapons?"

"P-90 and M-9," Alec said, clarifying. "Lane had lots more weapons training though. It was sort of his thing."

"What was your thing?" Max asked.

Alec made a face. "Supposedly hand-to-hand," he said. "But I was always more of a people person -- naturally empathic they said. That's why they put me into special training for undercover assignments earlier than the others. I got a lot of courses in modern history, common verbal usage, literature, stuff that got me ready for outside deep cover missions. The others were trained that way, too, to some extent. Jewel was good, but Keema, Lane, and Devon had sticks up their asses about not acting like ordinaries. They wouldn't have blended into society, 'least not when I knew 'em."

"What about Sam?" Max said.

Alec shrugged. "She was a cold one. Never got to know her very well. We weren't allowed to be 'friends' or anything, not even allowed to talk to one another outside of training. I always assumed she was deployed in '17 with the others."

"She got a special assignment to Division 12 at Fort Brevard the same time the others went to Quantico and you and Jace got busted back to platoon rank."

"And went deep cover," Alec said, nodding. "Only to finally reappear workin' for White and tryin' to take out her sib."

"You, of all people, know how White can force people to do things, Alec," Max said quietly.

"Point taken," Alec said, remembering his own brief sojourn into the dark side when he'd been blackmailed by White into hunting down his own kind.

But Logan was backing up. "You say Lane, Devon, and Keema weren't as people-oriented as you and Jewel? Meaning, they might not fit in as well on the outside, blend in as easily as you?"

"Zack could blend in," Max pointed out.

"But Zack had ten years on the outside to learn how," Logan interjected.

"I just mean don't look for any of them to be workin' undercover as motivational speakers or in the PR department of Macey's," Alec said. "Wherever they are, those three are layin' low. Jewel, though ..." He shook his head. "She's probably an exotic dancer or at the very least a tour guide. She and I used to talk sometimes, 'bout what we could use as undercover assignments. 'Least until we were caught." He looked at Max. "We weren't supposed to be friends, you see. The X5s. I heard later she got in some trouble for fraternizing with base personnel and gettin' caught off base without permission. But she still got deployed." He swirled the liquid of his drink, studying the eddies. "Me, I got in deeper shit, and was busted back."

"Thankfully," Max murmured.

Alec looked at her quickly, his eyes amused. "Meaning?"

"If you hadn't been held back along with Jace, then you'd be out there now, too, with an assignment ... waiting to kill ... still under Lydecker's control."

Alec shrugged. "Hey, luck of the draw. Instead, I'm now a freedom fighter for the," he made quote marks in the air with his fingers, "Transgenic Cause." But before Max could jump his ass for sounding so smart alec about it, he added, "And I've also got friends and family. Funny, back in '17 I was really bent outta shape, not gettin' the promotion. It was really hard bein' tossed back to a platoon with everyone knowin' I didn't make the grade. But now ... guess I was lucky after all. If I'd been deployed I wouldn't have been at Manticore when you were Max. I wouldn't have my freedom ... my purpose ... hell, I wouldn't even have my name."

He watched Max closely, making certain the additional words were enough of a mea culpa. He saw the fire in her eyes die down and knew he was forgiven -- again. She always forgives me.

Logan stood up, putting down his notebook. "I'm going to reheat that pasta," he said. "Anybody hungry now?"

"Me," Alec said quickly, holding up one hand with a grin. "And hey," he added, "if you need more specifics, about the weapons training and stuff, I can give that to you. I know what Lane's qualified for, the others too. More than what you've got in those dossiers of yours -- the special stuff we each had a knack for. Me ... I'm downright deadly with Songahm Taekwondo."

"Braggart," Max said softly, her hand resting on his knee where she was sitting on the floor beside him.

Logan's eyes were on them, and Max quickly pulled the hand away.

"I can take you any day, little girl," Alec said, the words filling in what could have been an awkward gap.

"In your dreams!" Max declared with a grin. "Remember, we've gone one-on-one more than once and I've beaten your ass every time!"

"Only 'cause I let you," Alec shot back, standing and heading back to the table where Logan was setting out the re-heated dishes. 'Sides, you're just a girl."

"I'll 'just a girl' you!" Max teased as she took a seat across from him. "Haven't you seen the t-shirt? Girls kick ass!"

"No, but I've seen enough of those Joshua t-shirts to last me a life time," Alec replied as he dished out fresh spaghetti on a clean plate."Hey," he added. "Why don't I get a t-shirt? The media's got my picture and, not to put Joshua down, I'm a hell of a lot more photogenic than the big guy."

"Of all the egotistical, self-centered remarks--" Max groused.

"Admit it, Max," Alec joked. "You secretly want to be on a t-shirt too. You know you do, a media hound like you."

"Shut up, pretty boy!"

Neither of the X5's noticed Logan watching them spar with words, his blue eyes sad behind the lenses of his spectacles ... resigned. Neither realized that he knew what they themselves didn't. How could he not, when they made such a perfect pair?

THE END