In the backseat of a black jeep on a back street
Posted 17 July, 2007 in D: 2007, F: Dark Angel, Pairing: Het, Rating: R
For winter_baby. Important note!: for the purposes of the story, “present day” is considered to be about a year after the events of “freak nation.”
Present Day.
They wake Alec up every hour on the hour for at least a week. Just as some kind of merciless clock in his brain calculates that it has been two weeks since he was captured, the same clock ticks off the minutes as he dozes – 58, 59, 60 – and then a guard rattles the bars or shoves a stick in his ribs and he stumbles to his feet. Sometimes they take him out for questioning – sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they shove a plate of food in under the bars. He gobbles it and then slumps back against the wall, trying to sleep, praying to God or Sandeman or whoever’s out there –
Please let Max come save me. Please.
He’s past pride, past embarrassment, past anything but a fervent wish to get out, to see a familiar face, maybe even to die if they’d let him have a bedsheet to hang himself with. They took his clothes ages ago, giving him a pair of basketball shorts and a t-shirt and a pair of socks and a blanket. The socks and the blanket are too short, and won’t hold his weight; he has already tried. He choked for a bit and then they gave way and he fell, and a guard came, and then they hit him again.
Two weeks. That’s a lot of hours, broken down into minutes, unbroken by any sound other than his own ragged breathing, the guards’ derisive comments, and the endless questioning in the square concrete room by a man he does not recognize. The man does not seem to be a snake cultist; Alec thinks perhaps he is with the government. A government. Or maybe not.
For the first week, he had been cheeky, cocky, leaning back in his chair and smugly refusing to answer questions. He’d still had his clothes then, most of them. He’d wanted to know what happened to his fellow Manticoreans, who were taken with him but whom he hadn’t seen since. The man gave him no answers. In fact it’s one of the few times since he left Manticore that someone has resisted his legendary charm – resisted it, and resented it. Alec considers wearily that his legendary charm had probably led him to this point. It seems to have backfired in a major way.
Please, Max. Please. He can’t help it, but at least he says it in his head.
* * *
As weak daylight filters through his high, barred window, they drag him out to the information room. The guards are mostly impersonal – one man in particular seems to have a little pity in his eyes, but he does his job – though some of them really hate him and go out of their way to humiliate him. At first he pretended more humiliation than he really felt – going around naked with a bag on your head? whatever – but after awhile it did start to get old. Being treated like an animal, even for a genetically altered supersoldier, begins to wear down on your humanity. And Alec doesn’t have that much to begin with. He imagines that one day he’ll just revert and go, snarling and raking his claws, for his captors’ throats. Of course, they’d have to take the chains off first.
“Tell me more about your assignments in the ‘field,’” says the government man, who Alec has dubbed (mentally and in honor of Max) Dick. Alec used to not answer these questions, but after two days of sitting up to his neck in a latrine, he decided to answer any question about Manticore, because who cared, those people were out of his life. That’s what Dick seems to have the most interest in – not Eyes Only, or Freak Nation, or the genetics question – no. Manticore was number one on the list. Dick had not yet asked about 452, either, which was good, because Alec does not intend to answer any questions about her.
Nine Months Ago
The first time Alec realized he was in trouble about Max was when she gave him a name instead of a number. The second time, much later, he watched her watch Joshua as the dog-man howled over Isaac’s corpse. She was propped up against a wall, looking ruffled and tender, her dark eyes full of that infinite sadness, as if she was holding the grief of everyone in Manticore, and Alec felt his heart lurch in his chest, really take a jump, like it was skipping rope at the playground.
But Max doesn’t ever seem to notice. In fact she wasn’t noticing much except how she had a viral restraining order out against Logan. She needed to get laid, stat, but Alec knew better than to offer. She’d bitten his head off about coming in late to work — if she’d known he had kind of half a thing for her, well. Normal would probably have had a new decoration (Alec’s head) for the Jam Pony offices.
And he would have offered, even if it meant perhaps some kind of relationship, which he knew he would be very bad at (having had no practice). Max was beautiful, it went without saying, but she was also kind. And it was that kindness that really got to Alec, because in his experience, kindness was never unselfish, except with Max and some of the people around her. Alec was selfish. He was the first to admit it. But Max taught him to think first, and to think first of others. Sometimes, sitting at the piano under Joshua’s house (he misses that piano), he played the Max music that was in his head, filling the air with Maxness, with sound.
It wasn’t like he was googly-eyed in love with her. Nah, love was for suckers. Love was staring sadly into a television screen and not telling your googly-eyed Eyes Only that he was the one for you. No thanks. What he felt for Max was … respect. Respect and lust and a sharp sort of tenderness that got him into trouble more often than not.
When she finally confessed that she made him part of an unwitting love triangle, he told her to knock it off. Secretly it was a little flattering — though who else was a viable candidate? Sketchy? — but he wanted her for herself, not so that she could bounce off him back to Logan when the mood struck her. And after they established Freak Nation, with attendant flag, it seemed like she and Logan were back on for good — at least that’s what the latex-gloved handholding meant to Alec.
So the third time he realized how in trouble he was, was when he accepted her offer to stay and help run Freak Nation. Honestly, he’d planned out his whole career post-Ames-White. It involved riding down and seeing what kinds of parties they were having in New Orleans, in New York, in New Anywhere That Wasn’t Seattle. It involved many girls, all of whom were completely un-transgenic (but found barcodes sexy), did not work at messenger services, and did not ride hot-ass motorcycles dressed in black leather. These girls wouldn’t have asked for his life story. Would only have wanted to see what was in his pants. And definitely wouldn’t have asked him to help gather lost and runaway transgenics up and herd them to the Freak Nation like so many poor little puppies. But that’s what Max asked.
“I know you were planning on taking off,” she’d started, shifting uncomfortably from leg to leg, as if she knew what he was going to say next, so he obliged her.
“Like you did? Ran off? Is that what you mean?”
“But I came back,” she said, “when people needed me.” Right there he could see it in her eyes, the sadness, and he knew she too wished herself anywhere else.
“No rest for the wicked, huh?” he said, and since he could not deny her, he chucked her under the chin with two fingers, winked, and told her that it was no problem, he could ride around in a van with Joshua all day, he could borrow her motorcycle and gather up strays, he could stop into her favorite sandwich place and pull his hood up to hide his neck and order a chicken club (hold the mayo) just to see her smile when he handed her the bag.
If he’d known where it would lead – if he’d known. He would have taken off for New Orleans that night. Right? Wouldn’t he have been able to leave her? Even if he knew it might mean his death?
Present Day
“So the types of X7s they created were animal derivates,” says Dick. Alec confirms it, shivering in the clammy cold radiating off the cellblock walls. By his sense of timing, they are perhaps four hours outside of Seattle, but in what direction he does not know. He thinks maybe they went north, because he has not been warm in forever. Dick doesn’t seem to notice his shivers, and continues the questions.
“How many combinations would you say that they created?”
“I don’t know,” says Alec. “When I was there I only went down to the X7 block once or twice.”
“What derivates did you see there?”
“Dog … cat … lizard. Badger.”
“And later?” says Dick. “You met more of them?” Alec, who has been staring at the floor, lifts his head up to see Dick smiling gently at him, probably like Torquemada smiled at his hapless Jews as he exhorted them to convert.
“What?”
“In the poison city, 494. You met more of the derivations. You helped gather them up and bring them to your leader.”
“I –”
“Don’t deny it. We had you under surveillance for four months. While we were orchestrating the Exodus.”
“You fuckers,” says Alec without heat. “You knew they’d fall for the Exodus because you were watching us.”
“Oh, we knew,” Dick smiles. “And you walked into it like the dogs you are, heeling to your master’s whistle. Tell me what kinds of derivates you met in the Freak Nation.”
“Don’t you already know?” mutters Alec. “You took almost every X7 living in Seattle.”
“I know what I know,” says Dick. “Now I want to know what you know. Don’t make us go through this all again.”
Six months ago
The TVs were constantly tuned to the news, and the Freak Nation factions fought every day on what to do vis a vis the normals. Alec took to humming the old classic, “Should I Stay Or Should I Go?” as he went about his business, watching the X5s and 6s argue with the X7s about whether they should move to their own enclave (perhaps someplace like Chernobyl? thought Alec derisively) or stay and try to integrate with the population.
Mostly it was the X7s who wanted to go. They wanted safe passage out and to find a place that no one else wanted, where they could live in peace. The X5s, obviously, wanted to stay. They were happy to hide their barcodes and pass; they didn’t have to go all survivalist and so they didn’t want to.
Max hadn’t heard anything from the cult since White … disappeared, regrouped, or whatever. No one was quite sure what happened to him. Alec was pretty sure he wasn’t dead. He was pretty sure that those snake cult folks were still hanging around, waiting to make their move. It was a stalemate all around, but it wasn’t going to last forever. In the last few months he’d seen wanted posters go up, some with Max’s blurry image on them, some with weird line-drawings of Joshua, even some with his own face, which made for strange times at the sandwich shop, staring a paper mirror pasted up above the cash register. Luckily no one ever seemed that interested, because when you get right down to it, Alec didn’t have a dog face, and he was a paying customer. Money talked louder than the news, he guessed.
Alec continued to ride with Joshua and Mole, picking up transgenics wherever he could (his sector pass had been revoked, so mostly they had to jump the barriers, which was a pain). Even more often he ended up half doubled over in some stinky sewer, calling out Manticore catchphrases, trying to calm down some panicked dude with a snout where his nose rightfully shoulda been. Not his idea of good clean fun. He tried bringing it up with Max but she just looked harassed and said, “Alec, I need you down there,” and that was the end of that.
Max had appointed a council to deal with housing needs, and a council to deal with getting food, but people still bothered her 24/7. Many X5s were out there, working like normal people and sending most of their money back to Manticore. Some of the more normal X7s sold the shit they found in Terminal City on the black market – electronics and the like. Some of them went out and stole stuff, probably, which fueled the news channels even more. Alec saw more than one flaming X merrily combusting on someone’s lawn.
All of this left Max with exactly zero time for a personal life. Alec hadn’t even been sure when was the last time she saw OC, let alone the Manly Love Interest. She didn’t even have time for a drink. She was besieged on all sides, and it was fraying her. When she went and lay down for an infrequent nap, Alec took to sitting outside her door and scaring off potential botherers. Sometimes, when he had time to think about it, he laughed at how stupid he was being. Max didn’t need a knight in shining armor or a bodyguard or any of those cliched stereotypes. She didn’t thank him –- she didn’t know about it – and he wanted to keep it that way.
As the summer heat began to wane and the chilly mornings crept back into Seattle, Alec took to early morning runs. Terminal City had a main boulevard, framed in creepy dead office buildings, that was relatively clear, and Alec pounded down it as fast as he could, trying to outrun his thoughts and lose himself in pure adrenaline. And then it was back to the grind, go here Alec, take this package to the old bus station, Alec, we need formula for the new babies, Alec, you need to help me out, you need to do something. It started feeling like a crisis situation, and no one was trying to avert the crisis – everyone just hurried it along. Oh, how they hurried it along.
Present Day
As the guard drags him out of the questioning room, he doesn’t seem to be able to control his legs. Probably the fault of the tasers; he sags and has to be supported at the armpits. He has given them almost everything he knows — pretty soon he’s going to have to start lying. It isn’t like he was in on anyone’s confidences or had secret clearance at Manticore. He’d told them about the missions he ran; the deaths he had seen and caused; and many of the things that had happened to him since he escaped Manticore and ended up in Seattle. But he had not told them how to get into the Freak Nation, and he hadn’t given up Max.
Dick had been pretty angry. Alec tests the edge of his lip with his tongue and winces. Luckily X5s healed pretty fast. This might leave a scar. He looks up at the sound of other footsteps – they are leading an X7 past him into the room. The X7, a badger model, looks much the worse for wear. He snuffles tiredly and barely turns his head as Alec (neverminding the split lip) hisses at him.
“Hey! Hey buddy! How you doing?” An inane question, but Alec can’t think of anything better. His brain isn’t working so well. The X7, looking thoroughly beat, just looks at him with sad eyes and whines, deep in his throat. And Alec’s guard drags him along more roughly.
“No talking between prisoners,” he says. “I could pistolwhip your ass for that.”
“Oh, please don’t,” says Alec. It’s not even a snappy comeback, just a plea. The guard seems to sense it.
“I won’t as long as you’re quiet. Just be quiet.”
And Alec is quiet, until the guard puts him in his cell and takes away his piss bucket and checks the bars on the high window to make sure they are still intact.
“Hey buddy,” he says, “how’d a nice guard like you end up in a place like this?”
The guard looks at him, face pokered up but a smidge of sympathy in his eyes. “They pay good money.”
“Ah,” says Alec. “Got a family, do you?”
“Yep.” The guard is about to close the door and Alec puts up a hand.
“Please. If you know a – a lizard-faced man named Mole – tell him I’m all right. Tell him not to worry about me, okay? He’s – my family.”
The guard stays expressionless, but looks at Alec for a minute, then gives the smallest of nods and closes the door. Alec hears the lock turn and leans his head back on his blanket. In his half-sleep he can almost hear music playing; his fingers twitch to sound the right notes.
Three Months Ago
In September, the X7s and the X5s finally come to blows. The X7s actually outnumbered the X5s and 6s living in TC, and everyone was touchy because they were hungry, and someone said something stupid, and an ice warrior beaned one of the 43s with a handy timber. Alec wasn’t there at the time – he was out finding parts for a camera that failed – but he heard about it later, at length, from Joshua.
“And then and then, waPOW! And kawham!” Joshua was dancing all around with the excitement of it, and Alec grinned.
“Did you take anyone out, big fella?”
Joshua’s face creased up, and he shook his head. “No way. I’m a painter, I don’t fight. Plus I had to protect the little fella.”
Alec felt his whole body tense up suddenly. “Someone tried to hurt little fella?”
Joshua’s face creased up even more. “Ummmmm,” was all he said, and Alec barreled around him and up to Max’s ‘office,’ which was a little space with a bed and an electric lamp and some candy bars stashed under a whole lot of papers. Max was sitting there reading something, totally unharmed, and when she looked up, he saw annoyance in her eyes and felt a wave of relief.
“I heard there was a little scrimmage today,” he said, propping a shoulder up on the doorjamb and fighting the urge to go to her. Man, he sure had it bad.
“Those idiots,” she said, “they took shots at each other. As if we don’t have enough shit to deal with.”
“Did you get in the middle of it?” She glanced down at her papers and fiddled with them, and it was enough of an answer. “You got between a bunch of transgenics with murder on their minds. Do you know –”
She stood up, the annoyance burning into righteous ire. “I’ve done it before and survived,” she hissed. “I can save my own ass. Thanks very much.”
“You’re right,” he said, throwing up his hands. Not really knowing why he was bothering. She was right. He knew it. So why the rush of protectiveness? “You’re right. Sorry for caring.”
“Alec,” she said, and then stopped. Sat back down on the bed again. Shoved a piece of paper at him. “Here’s your schedule for the next couple days. Some pickups down at the docks. I hope you don’t mind.”
“The docks’re my favorite place,” he said. “I love the smell of garbage rotting in the water. Love getting slimy crap on my boots. I love being your errand boy, Max.”
“I’m sorry, Alec, I didn’t mean it,” she said, but she didn’t look up from her papers. “I just haven’t – I’m just getting used to being alone again. Okay?”
“Did he even call you to say goodbye?” That stupid bastard had dumped her; Alec couldn’t keep the sneer out of his voice. “Or did he just fade out and now his number’s always busy? Off saving the world, one scrambled communication at a time.”
“Please, Alec,” she said. “Please don’t.”
“Fine, I’m done. But if I ever see him, he’s gonna get a punch in the face, and that’s a guarantee.”
“You’ll have to stand in line,” she said, so low-voiced only a transgenic could hear her, and he took the piece of paper and grinned his way down the hall.
Present Day
In the middle of the night it is so still that Alec can hear trucks grinding up and down a gravel road; the squeak of a gate as it opens; even sometimes the muted salutations of the guards. He has entered a state of half-awareness so profound that he loses time; he will sit down and then a guard will bang on the bars and he will realize it is two hours later. His infallible clock is getting fucked up but good.
Gravel crunches – changing of the guard. Muted hellos, how are yous, everything’s great, don’t worry, we’re breaking him slowly but surely. Alec feels a laugh welling up inside him, a really big one, but he stops himself because to laugh right now would alert the guards that something was really wrong with him and Alec doesn’t want them to know it even though he is in a very bad way.
Suddenly up above him something pings off the window bars and then Alec hears it fall to the floor. Then silence – no hissing that could be gas or a cherry bomb fuse or anything else. No whispers. No rescue. The crickets start chirping again.
Eventually he starts scrabbling around on the floor and he finds a pebble with a little piece of paper around it. There is not enough light to read the paper. The rock is too small for a weapon. Alec closes his eyes in frustration and opens them in daylight. For some reason the guards hadn’t rattled his cage; for some reason they had let him sleep. He is not sure he trusts such a benevolent change in routine.
When he remembers the paper in his pocket, he uncrumples it. Its message is printed in tiny copperplate: “Your friend Mole is dead. Most beast people are. You will be transported within the week. I am sorry.”
Mole. Help of the helpless, teller of bawdy jokes, smoker of vile-smelling cigars. Mole, who had believed in a new day and a new place, who had started this journey with his head stuck out the transport window singing “Viva Las Vegas” and doing a terrible Elvis impression. Inside, Alec wants to start kicking things, start screaming cuss words, start blowing stuff sky high. Outside, he is too beat down, and can barely put his arm over his face before the tears come.
Two Months Ago
It was Mole who first saw the TV news and ran shouting out to the truck where Alec was unloading medical supplies (Eyes Only, aka That Bastard, sometimes silently came through).
“Alec! You won’t believe this!”
“Believe what?” But Mole didn’t answer, just grabbed him and pulled him into where the main TV feeds were. Everyone was crowded around them, just staring, and Alec had to thread his way up to the front. Once there, he stood with his mouth open too, just like everyone else.
“TRANSGENICS TO GAIN AN EXODUS?” read the caption. A black-suited man Alec did not recognize was giving a press release with some kind of official seal behind him.
“– prepared to offer the transgenics a home site of their own. As you know, the Las Vegas nuclear power plant suffered a disastrous breakdown after the Pulse, and though it didn’t explode, the area still had to be evacuated. Experts estimate that it will be two to three hundred years until the place is stable enough for human habitation. But as we have seen in Seattle, transgenics can habitate in places that humans can’t.
“Therefore the government de facto of the United States is prepared to offer transport vehicles for any transgenic who wishes to move to the Las Vegas area within the next month. The government will set up supply routes and in return, the transgenics can make the place habitable and trade any items they find in the city that can still be used.
“That’s all. No questions.” He then stepped down from the podium, and the spellbound viewers in the room erupted into a roar of questions. It became so deafening that Alec climbed on a table and pounded on it with a pipe until people shut up.
“All right, people, all right!” As he calmed everyone down, Max climbed up on the table with him, grabbing his arm to help her steady on the wobbly legs.
“People,” she said in her Max way, “this is big news, okay? So let’s not go crazy. We have to think about this.”
“What’s there to think about?” yelled Mole. “It’s Las Vegas. Prolly a hundred degrees there right now.” Everyone laughs.
“It’s a government conspiracy,” said Dix sourly, “like what they did to the Indians. Keep ‘em where you can see ‘em, right? Rounded up in a place where you can grab ‘em if you want ‘em.”
“We’re already in a place like that,” shouted someone else, and then it went back into a general fight until Alec pounded the table again.
“Look,” said Max. “We have a month to decide. And I’m not gonna keep anyone here. If you want to go – you should go. Think of yourselves, think of your friends. It won’t hurt my feelings if you go.”
“But what about you, Max?” said Joshua. His face was worried and creased and his eyes were drooping.
“I don’t know, buddy,” said Max. “I just don’t know.”
After that everyone kind of turned back to the TVs and watched the news some more and Max got down off the table. Alec saw her threading her way out and knew where she was going — the place she always went when it gets bad. He knew he should let her be alone, but after watching the press release one more time, he slipped out too and headed over to the Space Needle.
She sat on the edge looking pensive, hair blowing back in the high winds that presaged rain. But she didn’t look surprised to see him.
“Lot of them are going to want to go,” she said. “Probably all the X7s. Maybe even some X5s. Freak Nation isn’t big enough to hold us all.”
“I know,” Alec said. “They’ve been itching for it and now they’ve got an excuse. Maybe it’ll be better down there. Maybe they’ll be … content.”
“If they go,” she said, and paused, and looked down into the distance, and he sighed, knowing what was coming. “When they go, I’m going to ask you a very big favor.”
“I will,” he said.
“You don’t know what I’m going to ask,” she said back, and smiled that lit up Max smile. For the first time in his life Alec wanted to kiss a woman but didn’t even try. Was afraid to try – didn’t want to ruin what he had.
“You want me to go with them and make sure they’re safe.”
“Yes,” she said. “And then come back to Seattle.”
“Come back?” He blinked — what a startling thing to hear.
“Come back,” she said, but she didn’t look at him, and they sat there until the rain really did start.
Present Day
There are five of them left, he sees as the guards push him out into the frozen cloudy evening in his tattered jeans and undershirt (all that is left of what he wore out of Seattle). Five left out of how many hundred? How many got away during those first few minutes, jumping out of the trucks and fleeing for their lives? How many went to ground, and how many were captured? Who was deported off to a lab, put back behind bars? Who died on a dirty concrete floor?
The guards chain him up five ways to Sunday: legs, arms, neck. He sees the other captives – two X5s, a fish-woman with a badly rigged breathing apparatus (she is gulping for breath) and a guy with a weird eyepiece who looks surprisingly well fed and comfortable. He’s not in chains – he’s walking around. Alec remembers him vaguely from the TC control room. He did something with TVs or something. Now he’s walking around like the teacher’s pet. Alec supposes he is – Dick’s pet. There’s something so poetic about it.
He saunters up to Alec and smirks. “I’d put extra chains on him,” he says to the guard. “I saw him jump a twenty foot fence once.”
“Liar,” says Alec mildly, shuddering in the cold but smiling all the same. “Like I’d take a little pissant like you on a mission.” It’s the first non-insane laugh he’s had in forever as the little jackass puffs up furiously.
“I hope you like your lab experience,” he hisses, drooling a little in fury. “I’ll tell ‘em to cut you extra slow.”
“Fuck you, you little sellout fucking freak.”
“I’m going to tell her once they let me go!” shouts the jackass. “I’m going to tell Max that you’re dead!”
“Whatever.” Alec turns his head as far as the chains allow and doesn’t respond to any more taunts. So the little freak goes over to insult the poor fish woman, who can’t even reply back because of the pipes. Alec hopes to heaven that they throw him off a handy bridge when they’re done with him, because it would be a favor to the world.
It’s goodbye to the facility then, and no chance to give Dick a big old hug, because the guards load them into black Hummers, two captives to a car. Alec finds himself in with another X5 whom he doesn’t recognize. He thought he knew everyone in Seattle, so this girl must have been from out of town. The guards allow a little talking and in whispers they exchange names – she is Sarah, from Canada.
“I was just passing through,” she said, her face as sad as his probably looks. “My boyfriend – I think maybe he got away, but probably not. He was just a normal.”
“I’m sorry,” Alec says, and then they are silent. Darkness falls early and all he can see out the window is forest and the taillights of the Hummer in front of him. At least he is warm. He begins to speculate miserably on what lies ahead for him and Sarah. Probably this will be the end of the line – they will either figure out how to reprogram him, or they will cut him up to see how he works. He is really not looking forward to either future.
He is half asleep and lolling against the seat when he hears a massive thump and the Hummer brakes screeching. The guards are cursing and he and Sarah take one look at each other and throw themselves down into the well between the front and back seats. There is a smash as the Hummer hits the one in front of it, a dizzying twirl, and they come to a halt on the side of the road.
“I think it was a tree,” one guard says to another, “or something came down in front of the cars – Mack, Mack, are you all right? *Shit.*”
Mack obviously wasn’t all right and as Alec is about to say something there is another thump, this one on the roof, and then the door is yanked open and the remaining guard seems to fly right out of the Hummer as if by magic. Alec’s not sure if he’s awake – maybe this is a dream, or worse – when the back doors are yanked open too and there is Max, staring down at him like some kind of furious angel.
“Am I dead?” he asks her, because he can’t turn his head far enough to look at Sarah. He can only stare up at her – her hair is a bit longer, he thinks inanely. But she’s wearing her usual black combat gear. He clambers back up onto the seat as best he can in chains (doing a kind of modified dolphin twist). “Is this hell or heaven?”
“We’re transgenics, Alec,” she says dryly. “We don’t believe in that stuff.” And then she does a totally un-Max-like thing, or maybe it’s totally Max-like — she crouches down and puts her hand out and touches his cheek. A month of scruff, it’s not all that pretty, but she stays right there and her eyes are big and brown and as full of sorrow as he remembers.
“Alec, I’m so sorry,” she begins, and then stops, and says, “I should have gone myself,” and then stops, and he’s just looking at her, because she did come to save him, so maybe prayers get answered, so maybe he does believe in that kind of stuff, and then nothing matters anymore at all because she leans in and kisses him as hard as she can, scruff and all, kisses the hell out of him, so beautifully that he forgets the last few thoughts in his head. When they finally come up for air he’s panting and on fire and his wrists feel like they’re broken.
“I loved that,” he says. “I really really did. But could you get these chains off me now?”
“Alec,” she says, and then behind her there’s Joshua, who lifts him bodily out of the truck and holds him like a baby while Max undoes his chains and then moves on to Sarah and the fish woman and the other X5.
“There’s an X7 with some kind of eye implant – an informer – he’s not on our side,” he says tiredly, and Max nods and she touches his cheek and then she actually picks up his hand and kisses it in front of Joshua and everyone and it kind of makes him embarrassed but happy too. And then they put him back in the Hummer, but an X7 is driving it this time and he has the whole backseat, so he sleeps all the way back to Seattle and wakes up in the Freak Nation. Things look the same but not the same, and Alec is not sure how he feels being back — being alive when so many others are dead. He’s feeling fuzzy and weird and guilty and his body clock has given up the ghost because it is not working.
So the first thing he does is have a bath – a really good long one, and damn the hot water – and then he finds some clothes that do not smell like piss and blood and concrete. And then he goes back to sleep for as long as he wants to. When he comes to and opens his door to find something to eat, Max is sitting outside reading a book. He looks at her and he can’t help it, he smiles a big goofy smile, and she raises her eyebrow at him.
“What?”
“What are you doing?”
“Just paying you back for all those times you protected me so I could sleep.” She smiles and closes her book. “So how about I take you out to lunch and you tell me all about your big adventure? We got a lot from the people that escaped the transports, but it took us a damn long time to find you. I’m sorry we didn’t find you sooner.”
“I know you did your best,” he replies, because none of it was her fault and he wants her to stop apologizing. He puts out a hand to help her up; she takes it, and it just occurs naturally – uh huh – that he pulls her up against him and kisses her some more. And when they do finally get to lunch, she’s got kind of a goofy smile going too.
–end–
*title is from a song by Low Millions called, “Nikki Don’t Stop.”