DA Fic: Heat part 6/8
Title: Heat part 1 - part 2 - part 3 - part 4 - part 5 - part 6 - part 7 - part 8 & Epilogue (Completed)
Continued in Sequel: Traces
Author: Mink (& thank you Jink!)
Rating: NC-17
Spoilers: General
Disclaimers: DA & characters are owned by their respective creators.
It was snowing hard up there.
The wind was so hard he had trouble keeping the car going in a straight line, the howl of it sending the white flurry of snow sideways across their slow but steady path up the winding roads. He had insisted they stop and buy her a jacket, one of those nylon types with the faux fur along the hood. Without one you just didn't look right around the people that chose to populate these mountains. The temperature was too low to be walking around like it suited you. Transgenics forgot sometimes when they should appear uncomfortable.
The small town had sentries at the entries of its two main roads. Typical for these times when all the local governments took it upon themselves to guard their own carefully maintained sanctuaries from the hordes of city dwellers that had migrated north since the Pulse. The exodus had slowed to a crawl these days but the one horse towns still upheld their own set of laws. They usually didn't give you much trouble if you didn't look the part, and Logan’s story of being honeymooners might have annoyed Max, but it got them in and out of the check points in no time flat.
The right paper work helped too. Forged of course. Logan sometimes wondered if there was a single person traveling these northern roads that had a legit ID on them. When you left the cities walls it was usually for some pretty drastic reasons. Good or bad. Logan's contact had gotten them much further than he thought was possible.
The deceased transgenic whose photos Logan had carefully locked on his laptop was hard to trace but with the right chain of just the right people, nothing was completely a secret. He'd gotten the dead transgenic's designation, which despite the black hair samples, was a cold relief when it did not contain any of the numbers associated with Alec. The designation brought a joyless spark of hope and even a little bit of optimism but it was in so far, not much use to them despite the thrill the contact had in achieving the secret. Logan catalogued it away with all other known transgenics and wondered as he did, if this one had had a name.
But that wasn’t all Logan had gotten from his contact.
What was much more interesting was the origin of the body and when and where the samples were taken. It had gotten a little vague then. Canada was a large and dark country. After the hit to the continent's computer systems, the north had been hit the hardest in regard to their power plants and less than half the country had reliable power. It was a place you could easily run and hide. It had dark corners within darker corners and if you wanted to vanish, it was fairly easy to do just that. If the men of Manticore wanted to go even further off the radar, it would take more than a good head start and an informant to find them.
However, “North” was not exactly a location. Logan had gotten so much information and it was as if they had just hit another brick wall. But then something happened that neither Logan or Max could quite believe. A reliable informer that had used the north country to make a disappearing act of his own suddenly reappeared in Logan's inbox.
There was a doctor, used to be a military field surgeon but had taken up in a small clinic just west of the mountains and had also taken up a new name and life. His contact thought it would be of interest to Logan that a John Doe appeared in the clinic emergency just that night. Barely a few hours ago. Beaten all to hell and incoherent, the patient had only one identifying mark.
A barcode tattoo on the back of his neck.
And he added, Logan had better not take his time.
The man was dying.
It wasn't difficult to find the small clinic. It sat in the even smaller town that lined the valley floor on the outskirts of a snowy mountain range that reached forever on both ends of the horizon. It also wasn’t difficult because the town it resided in had about ten permanent structures total.
Set up for the surrounding population that lived isolated and scattered through the hills and canyons, it was open to just about anyone that stumbled through its doors. Logan signed a fake name at the small desk that sat at its front. It was manned by one woman, her hair going gray and her smile firmly lined from those self rolled cigarettes that were the cheapest on the market. He showed her his fake ID that made he and Max 'Medical Staff' from the nearest police precinct which was almost 50 miles away down in the next valley.
She barely looked at the IDS before buzzing them in past the doors.
“Down there, keep to your right,” she told them. “Might be sleeping.”
Max eagerly pushed past Logan and took up at a brisk pace down the dimly lit passage. She stopped and raised her head, smelling the air.
“He’s here.” She whispered in soft disbelief.
Ignoring the protests of the nurses, Max entered each room, swinging back curtains that were in her way and opening closed doors that said ‘Do not Enter’.
“Alec!” She finally just yelled out. “Alec!”
Logan tried to make reassuring faces to the flustered and angry staff but he felt Max’s urgency just the same. He wanted to see Alec laying in one of these beds. He wanted to shake his hand and start figuring out a way to get him the hell out of here and back home.
It turned out to be the last room. Logan followed in Max’s wake, the shrill rip of the curtain being pulled away revealed the man that lay hurt, his bleeding wounds staunched. He turned to look at them in alarm, his movements weakened by injury but his scent... The smell struck Logan as he got to Max’s side. It was low and heavy like burnt sugar, scorched vanilla and fresh clean sweat.
Logan swallowed and stepped back in confusion.
“Wh-who are you?” Max demanded.
The man was made of a large grade, tall, wide, pale hair and paler eyes. Made just normal enough to pass in society, but just odd enough to betray what powers might lay beneath. Logan kept his confusion in but Max made her frustration be heard out loud, advancing and clutching the collar of the medical gown in a low growl that made the man in the bed visibly nervous.
Whoever this X-5 was, he wasn’t Alec.
“Did you live in Seattle?” Logan asked softly.
“Y-yes sir.” He managed. “Worked for the city department. Mostly sewer work.”
With the water mains. Logan sat down with a sigh, White must have gotten this poor bastard almost right off the bat. He saw the now familiar strain in the transgenic’s muscles, the frantic energy he kept in check despite his injuries. The way he kept looking away from them both, especially Max.
“Are there others? Where you were taken?”
Max waited for his answer intently.
“White he, he, I don’t know. They just disappear. One at a time.” The X said softly. “I barely got out after the fires started, 494, he was with me but by the time I made it to the truck… they’d got him-“
Max stood. "494-"
Logan found himself standing too. “Alec, you saw Alec. You saw Alec there?”
The X-5 looked down, shame coloring his pale skin. "Dead." The transgenic breathed out painfully. "No way he got out of there-"
"But you saw him! Alive? Where?" Max’s heart was beating so fast her breathing matched its rhythm, her grip on the transgenic tight and threatening.
“I saw him in the labs almost every day,” He mumbled. “49- Alec, he- he made a plan, we’d rig the computer’s with a spiral virus so it would shut everything down. I don’t know how he did his end but I hacked into a terminal when they left me locked down in a physicians prep room for a few minutes.”
Logan saw the pale blue eyes grow cloudy for a moment, the strange brand of fear the transgenics used plain on his face. They faced fear like children. Bewildered and confused.
“They were going to operate on me.”
The images of the photos of the dissected X-5 flashed briefly through Logan’s mind but he brushed them away. This X-5 had somehow escaped that fate and he was more or less safe. Logan looked up grimly the vitals that ran across an over head computer display. Although they were having a lucid conversation, this transgenic was in pretty bad shape. Multiple gun shot wounds had damaged him, and the blood they were giving him to replenish his supply was woefully the wrong and very human kind.
“It worked right away.” The X continued. “It started some fires. Turned off the lights. Then we just moved.”
Logan guessed this solider had been made for heavy nocturnal operations with no need for night vision equipment. It would explain the laborious sewer job and exactly why he was able to get out of a total power outage situation in a lock down facility and Alec somehow couldn’t.
He looked over at the other transgenic in the room. Her eyes were locked on the floor, her adrenaline finally waning, her hope shifted back to baffled confusion. Logan realized he’d just seen that look in the wounded X-5’s eyes. It was fear.
"Max?" Logan placed a hand on her arm, and swallowed nervously.
She sat back and gestured towards the door with her chin.
"Shut the door." She used the plastic tube going into the X-5's arm to wrap around her own upper arm.
Logan followed her curt directions to give them privacy.
"What are you doing?"
Max removed the needle from the transgenic's arm and slid it into her own flesh, making a circuit between them and bypassing the fluid that had been placed there.
"Saving his life."
Logan watched the dark red line travel quickly through the clear tubing and into the incision in the transgenic's arm. Max's expression was flat. There was nothing like compassion or sympathy in her eyes, not even relief when the transgenic's pained breaths grew slow and easy and his heart rate evened out. She was detached, eyes staring straight ahead, seeing little.
Suddenly her head snapped up.
"Who are you?"
A young girl had entered the room.
Logan watched Max study the girl carefully.
He did the same. He didn't know if it was all his exposure to transgenics or just simple observance that caused him to begin to recognize the certain traits of Manticore, but he'd never seen anyone like her before. Unlike the white blue eyes of the wounded transgenic in the bed, her eyes were a shade of brown he'd never seen. It was as if she was lit up from the inside, her eyes flashing like an animal with eye shine. She seemed to know they were strange and kept her gaze trained downwards as much as possible. Her hair was too gold, her skin was perfectly pale.
"X-6." Was all Max said softly.
"Are you okay? What's your name?" Logan asked, overwhelmed slightly by her youth. He had never seen a transgenic this age, her bruised face and wide frightened eyes made him half sick.
"She can't talk." Max muttered to him.
Logan watched as they exchanged hand signs, quickly and effortlessly as any other foreign language. He wasn't sure how Max knew, and he wondered if her muteness was engineered or some kind of horrible mistake a scientist made in her genetic mapping. Maybe it was less than a mistake. Maybe it was function they hadn't deemed completely necessary for her role in their plans. With a sick sigh, Logan wondered if the men who had bruised her up had even known she was unable to answer their questions even if she had wanted to.
“She drove the truck that got them out of there.” Max said out loud.
She turned her attention back to the girl.
"Tell me how to find this place."
The X-6 nodded.
It was amazing all that could happen in the span of a few hours.
The auxiliary power had finally come up on level one. The second third levels below were still in total darkness, crews working the floors with flashlights to reach the transformers that had been blown with the computer override that jumped all the circuit breakers and let them cycle until they fried.
Transgenics. They were pretty clever when you gave them even the slightest of chances. But that was what this place had been assembled for. A place for no chance at all. But it had still happened.
And it had happened on his watch.
A large bank of computer monitors on a large metal rack stood tall and in his path. With strength he shouldn’t have he flung it out of his way, shattering glass and showering glittering sparks behind him. The major fires that had started were under control but teams were still working on the smaller more prolific electronic fires. They had had worked their countless ways into the walls and into some of the third floor bottom labs.
Agent Ames White grabbed a flash light from one of the men busy taking a panel down off the wall, wires flashing and flickering with blue fire across the corridor floors.
"Where is he?" Ames asked. He was surprised at the sound of calm in his voice.
"Found him down by the loading dock sir."
Ames nodded in the dim chaotic light of flash lights and hurried movement of people working, walking and talking in every direction. It was strangely quiet, the core of the subterranean structure shut down, leaving them all in murky empty echo of their own footsteps and the brief hectic spurts of information on the radios from the men chasing what was left of the fires.
He was surprised the three transgenics had gotten as far as the level 1 loading area, and another emotional sensation he owned all together relayed just how he felt about the fact that two of the things had managed to flee the facilities premises that way. In the fire, in the dark, with his own personal guards laying down a spread of bullets that should have cut them all into pieces. So many pieces they'd have trouble putting them back to together for sale. However, the transgenics had eluded them and vanished into the surrounding woods like ghosts. He had a few helicopters up looking for them as soon as he could get them in the air. But they hadn't spotted anything but an abandoned military truck. The canyons and ravines appeared empty.
But they left one behind.
Or it left itself behind so the other two had a chance. Who knew what transpired in the world of transgenic ethics? The X-6 female was no major loss, her ovaries and other marketable items had already been extracted, but the male X-5 had already been sold. Ames had already cashed the proverbial check so to speak. Ames White was extremely unhappy.
When he finally got to the utility room they had converted to secure the remaining X-5, he paused for a moment before he motioned for the crossed machine guns to part to allow him access.
There he was.
X5-494
The bullets hadn't quite ripped him apart but they had gotten him in the upper right and lower quadrant of his body. He'd put up some fight, overturned boxes of sampling tubes lay scattered, an entire metal shelf fallen on its side. Behind the chaos, he heard him panting. His blood pumped out through his wounds as a medic pressed a wad of gauze heavy over the worst of it. He lay in a heap, his legs sprawled, sweat making his clothes settle close against his skin. He was ended even if he wouldn't admit it. To White, this meeting would have been easier had he been unconscious. He could manage the scent without the rest. His eyes were bright and alert and trained on him.
White blinked several times to clear his head with the onslaught of scents combined in the confines of the small room. The smell of him boiled white hot with the mixture of the persistent scent of fire. The blood added to the burn of melted plastic, singed circuit boards, smoldering fiberglass insulation, and the black oily smoke that lingered up around the ceilings. Thick and heavy, like the red blood flowing from the wounds, Ames felt it fuel and join with his rage, a sweet melding of emotions that he never found very far apart in the first place, desire and violence fusing into one solid need.
"G-Good to see ya Ames." 494 wheezed, his teeth chattering as his body was settling nicely into shock. "I think I messed up your tree fort."
“You.” Ames White said. “Why is it always you?”
494 tried to shrug and managed a weak smile from where he lay on the floor.
"Everyone." Ames hissed. "Out.”
Medics and armed men looked at each other before they wordlessly complied, filing after each other in the small space and out the door.
Ames knelt over him, his anger surpassing any rational reaction he could have ever normally exacted. To his surprise, he found a hungry calm. This body under him, the smell of his life pumping slowly out into the air, the transgenic's short panting exhales of pain. Heavy and sweet, low and burning not unlike the unchecked fires that dotted the maze of his landscape.
Conquering his distaste, Ames pushed his hand under the issued shirt, the thick hot wet fabric bunching up through his fingers, revealing one of the bullet wounds, and 494's chest, stained red and slick. 494's angry hiss was hot on his face.
“Why… why is it whenever I turn around, I always find you?”
He didn't want the freak to speak. Didn't want to hear the retort through shaky breaths, the false bravado. He pressed his cheek against the transgenic’s, like an animal in greeting, the oily feel of blood letting him slide his face gently until their chins met. 494 was staring at him, startled into remaining still. His eyes stayed wide while Ames's thumb pulled down his lip and jaw, opening his mouth to his own, tongue tasting the hot coppery tang of blood, inhaling all of his scents of anger, fear, pain.... Ames moaned a little into the X-5’s mouth, pushing him down under him, his hands pulling Alec's hips down, forcing his thighs apart. Pale red speckled hands came up weakly against Ames's chest and face.
Ames didn't mind the resistance. He preferred it, in fact. He marveled at the fact that the hormone still was affecting them both even now, after so much damage had been sustained. When so much was there to lose, chemistry still ruled them both like mindless fools. 494's eyes half closed, his breathing going too fast, too hard. From Ames's proximity or his pain. Or both.
"D-Don’t…uhhdon’t-“
Ames’ shut him up. Sitting forward and pressing him down by the chest, he filled his mouth with hot damp flesh, holding a hand full of his short cropped hair, and running a hand over hard lines of the muscle, sliding over barely tended open wounds just to make the thing under him cry out in louder noises when he wanted to hear them. He withdrew and leaned down to cup the X-5’s chin in his grip.
“You think it’s been bad?" Ames whispered angrily into his mouth as he worked his hand slow and messy between the transgenics thighs. “Do you think this has been bad for you?”
494 cried out with a cut off groan when Ames let what he provided as pleasure shift to pain and back again. 494 struggled to look at him, panic and humiliation mixed hopelessly in his eyes. Ames tasted the blood that had pooled at the base of his throat, biting down into it and licking his lips.
"Do you even know what pain is?"
494 moaned as the hands worked further into his issued fatigues, sliding them down his sweat slicked thighs, Ames felt his skin glow like fire at the thought of bringing the freak this close to it all the while he was slowly dying. It was too stifling, his flesh igniting wherever it touched the trangenic’s. Fighting to breathe, his mouth found the side of the throat, inhaling in the soft hollow of flesh below the ear, the scent driving him as he pushed impossibly slow. His mind barely registering the overwhelming pleasure of it, his arms crushing the prone body closer, relishing the choked cries of pain that were smothered in his mouth as he brutally tasted what he wanted.
He couldn’t stop. He couldn’t take himself one inch away from the smell and feel of it. His hands gripped the sweaty undersides of knees and pushed the struggling transgenic hard against the wall. It was all he had wanted since he’d seen the cursed X half naked and alone up on top of the Space Needle. It was all he could think about when he passed the labs and caught scent of them down there, unguarded and shackled. It was unrelenting. It was unbelievable. It was disgusting.
Ames stood, his mouth smeared red with blood, his clothes and hands stained with it. His heart pounded in his ears, every fiber of his being wanted to lay back down over that body and make it comply to him. Open to him. Come for him. Over and over again until there wasn’t a breath left in its body…
“You… you did this to me Alec.” Ames spit. “I didn’t do this to you.”
Breathless, the transgenic painfully considered him from the floor, still reeling from the contact, trying to get his clothes back where they had been before and failing.
Somehow he was smiling.
“Y-You, you called me Alec.”
“Medic!”
The door opened again and uniformed men stepped in with their equipment. They paused at Agent White at first, thinking perhaps he had been attacked just as they stood several meters away just outside the door.
But they quickly saw their error and casting their eyes down, went to attend the transgenic that lay struggling for breath on the floor.
This torture was going to end.
At least for Ames White.
It had never been intended for Ordinaries. Its origins dated back to much crueler times. For himself, Ames thought quite highly of what he termed his enhanced little magic trick. The tank looked ordinary and in fact it was. Some wrought iron adjustments here and there to immobilize and a tacked on telemetry device to denote progress and the whole thing was really quite fundamental.
He put them in alive and took them out his.
And most importantly, behind all that glass and all those gallons of water, Ames White couldn’t smell a God damn thing.
"Sir?"
The tech, clad in gear reserved for operations in sub-zero terrain, moved urgently to speak with Ames.
"Report."
"We are approaching the 25 minute mark."
"Vitals?"
"Unstable. At this stage harmful."
Harmful was a soft word in Ames' language.
"Irreversible?"
The tech's eyes traveled swiftly to the neon readings of the LCD screen against the tank's surface.
"Not yet." He admitted reluctantly.
Ames smiled.
"Good." He clapped the man on the shoulder and took a step forward.
It was truly a thing of beauty.
He passed his hand over the chill surface, wiping away the frosted condensation.
494 had been stripped to his thermal trainers, a single electrode strapped to his wrist. Curled in a fetal position at the bottom of the tank, head bent to knees, eyes closed, still as a preserved specimen.
But his vitals showed he was very much alive.
The water had turned a sickly pale pink from his wounds, the blood viscous and dark from lack of oxygen, pumping sluggishly into the clear fluid. It had slowed minutes ago, congealing with the frigid water.
His blood was a study unto itself.
The oxygen binding molecules of hemoglobin in his blood had been designed to survive extreme conditions, fixing with greater tenacity to the blood cells, renewing almost instantaneously. He had been under for 25 minutes. No chance for oxygen renewal. His heart recirculating old concentrated blood over and over and over.
An Ordinary would have expired within minutes.
Even his transgenic physiology employed the same survival mechanics. The freezing temperature of the water had slowed his metabolism, his heart rhythm decreased into brachycardia. It would not be long now before it stopped altgether but even then he could survive a few minutes longer before everything shut down, went offline, got spoiled.
It was very possible that when they pulled him out this time, his brain would be permanently affected. Oh well, liabilities were liabilities. The team in Johannesburg would have to accept some damage in transit.
He had attempted to free himself at first, struggling against the heavy iron lid at the top, the only way in or out of his aqueous environment. Both ankles had been strapped down with weights. That hadn't stopped him from trying a little. He'd gotten the message quick enough when the firm plexiglass refused to give way beneath his powerful kicks, his fists useless though thrown with precision.
He'd stopped moving altogether.
Which was how Ames found him now.
Slowly he knelt down to the transgenic's level, peered at the pale, bloodless face. Proximity to the X5 no longer had any effect, the frigid temperature had tampered with the makeup of his blood so profoundly that it quieted the hormone raging in his system. Even outside the water, he knew he would feel nothing, even if he touched the cold, hard flesh. He had ceased to sweat, did not leave any scent, even the molecules in his saliva would be nulled. Grinning, he tapped hard on the glass.
The transgenic's eyes snapped open reflexively, wide and unseeing. Startled, Ames withdrew.
"Alright." He said.
The surrounding unit acted with haste. A guard in a wetsuit was lowered into the tank to retrieve 494, unbinding his shackles and hauling him up to the surface.
"He's not breathing sir." The guard reported. "No cardiac activity."
The cyanotic blue of 494's lips and the lack of response to the beam of light shone directly in his eye did not faze Ames in the least. The limp body was transferred quickly to the cement floor, the team of medical personnel swarming around him. They knew what to do. After all, this was their third time.
Ames waited patiently against the door as they brought 494 back from the dead. Water was suctioned from paralyzed lungs, irritated back into some mimicry of function. Compressions and epinephrine restarted his heart. The rush of air choked him, offending and foreign in his airway. The strained wheeze was music to his ears.
"We have a pulse."
Ames took this as his signal to begin.
Coughing and shuddering, 494 moaned. A blanket was thrown over his body in a rudimentary attempt to conserve heat. Ames crouched down beside him.
"Permission to start a warm saline drip--" The medic watching the readings on the LCD ventured nervously.
"Denied."
Ames did not acknowledge him, his attention focused on 494.
"Welcome back." He smiled.
"Hey Ames." Alec's voice rasped, barely audible through his shivers.
"Amazing." Ames whistled. "How you can't seem to die."
"Like a roach." Though his teeth chattered convulsively, Alec managed a smile.
Ames leaned in, grasping Alec's chin in his hand, his smell almost gone to nothing. "I've been more than exceedingly kind up until this point 494, I've done everything short of tucking you into bed at night.“
If he thought this transgenic knew even vaguely where the escaped X series had gone he would have stripped his skin slowly from his body until he spilled it out like his body would everything else. But what he really wanted to know would warrant more persuasion than that. And his buyers had set him on a time table.
“Tell me now. While we still have time. Where...is....452?"
"D-Disneyworld."
Ames sighed.
"Put him in again."
No one moved. Ames felt the back of his eyes grow hot.
"That was an order." He repeated.
The head of the medical unit intervened.
"Sir. He's too unstable. If we put him under again, the damage to his internal organs will make him unviable. He'll be worthless on the market."
Ames gritted his teeth. On the floor, Alec's voice rose up to taunt him weakly.
"Nyah-nyah-nyahhhh."
Ames smiled shortly. "You see, you have lack of faith in our 494. I think he’ll do just fine. I want him back in. And drop the temperature by 10 degrees.”
The transgenic's eyes closed, turning his head quickly to the side so he could cough up more fluid from his lungs.
"N-no p-problem." He choked, fighting every word. "Maybe I'll freeze s-solid."
Ames sighed. "That would be convenient, your new owners want you intact."
The transgenic shuddered violently, seized by another fit of coughing.
"And unfortunately, alive." Ames turned to the medic waiting in the background. At his nod, the man knelt down and prodded the inside of Alec's arm with latex gloved fingers. It took him almost a minute to locate the pale blue vein beneath the stark white flesh.
Weakly, the transgenic obeyed the order to make a fist, clenching trembling fingers. He jerked mildly when the needle entered his flesh, warm saline pumping at a timed rate through his fractured system. Within a minute, his tremors slowed and ceased, his color evening out. The medic leaned over to get a pressure reading.
"Stabilizing."
Ames looked down at him.
"Your new owners will adore you. They have you scheduled for all kinds of fun things. Rejection studies, healing factors, regeneration. Just think? You'll help advance a generation."
"Yay." The transgenic lay unmoving on the floor.
He could see the pale lips tremble lightly, a weak smile forming, eyes empty and glazed. He'd seen that look before. In the eyes of the executed and the lost, on souls who had nothing left to lose.
He was cracking.
"We ready?" He asked the medic.
"Affirmative."
"Don't want to come back...." The transgenic breathed weakly as hands reached for him, lifting him. "Stop... want... to stop."
Ames briefly imagined the pain involved to be cycled back and forth from the edge and back again. Repeatedly and without pause. It must be close to unbearable.
"If you stop for good, I don't get paid."
494 barked a tired laugh as he was wrenched up and held in place, leaning limply against the shoulder of the guard. Ames spoke close to his ear.
"The sooner you tell me where I can find 452. The sooner this ends."
"That's..." The transgenic wheezed with difficulty, a weak laugh making his shoulders shake. "...exceedingly ...kind."
"Put him in."
"Again." The transgenic was trying not to laugh now, his shoulders shook uncontrollably as he fought a strange smile. "Again. And again. And again! I'll come back ya know. I always come back!"
He wouldn't shut up. Not when the heavy rusted iron lid was lifted. Not when his hands and ankles were bound once more and weighted. Not when he was lowered slowly back into the cold pinkish hell.
"What are you afraid of Ames?" With his last breath before he went under, his gaze flickering to one of the lab techs and addressing her instead. "That your parents will find out?"
Something there, within all the X-5 stubborn refusal to bend, had finally in fact, snapped into pieces.
"Find out." Alec sputtered and gasped as the water rushed up to his face. "Find out wh-what you like to do--"
The smart oddly placed comments had started to blur into some frantic lunacy. Like all the others that Ames had tested through these trials, they finally gone someplace beyond the pain. Beyond fear. If the transgenic had ever shied from the concept of his own demise he didn't any longer. He feared returning back from it. Ames smiled as the transgenic momentarily thrashed when he became completely submerged once again.
They always came out at the other end all his.
All completely his.
tbc
part 7
Cross posted to jam_pony_fic
Cross posted to darkangelfic
Cross posted to x5_darkangel_x5
Continued in Sequel: Traces
Author: Mink (& thank you Jink!)
Rating: NC-17
Spoilers: General
Disclaimers: DA & characters are owned by their respective creators.
It was snowing hard up there.
The wind was so hard he had trouble keeping the car going in a straight line, the howl of it sending the white flurry of snow sideways across their slow but steady path up the winding roads. He had insisted they stop and buy her a jacket, one of those nylon types with the faux fur along the hood. Without one you just didn't look right around the people that chose to populate these mountains. The temperature was too low to be walking around like it suited you. Transgenics forgot sometimes when they should appear uncomfortable.
The small town had sentries at the entries of its two main roads. Typical for these times when all the local governments took it upon themselves to guard their own carefully maintained sanctuaries from the hordes of city dwellers that had migrated north since the Pulse. The exodus had slowed to a crawl these days but the one horse towns still upheld their own set of laws. They usually didn't give you much trouble if you didn't look the part, and Logan’s story of being honeymooners might have annoyed Max, but it got them in and out of the check points in no time flat.
The right paper work helped too. Forged of course. Logan sometimes wondered if there was a single person traveling these northern roads that had a legit ID on them. When you left the cities walls it was usually for some pretty drastic reasons. Good or bad. Logan's contact had gotten them much further than he thought was possible.
The deceased transgenic whose photos Logan had carefully locked on his laptop was hard to trace but with the right chain of just the right people, nothing was completely a secret. He'd gotten the dead transgenic's designation, which despite the black hair samples, was a cold relief when it did not contain any of the numbers associated with Alec. The designation brought a joyless spark of hope and even a little bit of optimism but it was in so far, not much use to them despite the thrill the contact had in achieving the secret. Logan catalogued it away with all other known transgenics and wondered as he did, if this one had had a name.
But that wasn’t all Logan had gotten from his contact.
What was much more interesting was the origin of the body and when and where the samples were taken. It had gotten a little vague then. Canada was a large and dark country. After the hit to the continent's computer systems, the north had been hit the hardest in regard to their power plants and less than half the country had reliable power. It was a place you could easily run and hide. It had dark corners within darker corners and if you wanted to vanish, it was fairly easy to do just that. If the men of Manticore wanted to go even further off the radar, it would take more than a good head start and an informant to find them.
However, “North” was not exactly a location. Logan had gotten so much information and it was as if they had just hit another brick wall. But then something happened that neither Logan or Max could quite believe. A reliable informer that had used the north country to make a disappearing act of his own suddenly reappeared in Logan's inbox.
There was a doctor, used to be a military field surgeon but had taken up in a small clinic just west of the mountains and had also taken up a new name and life. His contact thought it would be of interest to Logan that a John Doe appeared in the clinic emergency just that night. Barely a few hours ago. Beaten all to hell and incoherent, the patient had only one identifying mark.
A barcode tattoo on the back of his neck.
And he added, Logan had better not take his time.
The man was dying.
It wasn't difficult to find the small clinic. It sat in the even smaller town that lined the valley floor on the outskirts of a snowy mountain range that reached forever on both ends of the horizon. It also wasn’t difficult because the town it resided in had about ten permanent structures total.
Set up for the surrounding population that lived isolated and scattered through the hills and canyons, it was open to just about anyone that stumbled through its doors. Logan signed a fake name at the small desk that sat at its front. It was manned by one woman, her hair going gray and her smile firmly lined from those self rolled cigarettes that were the cheapest on the market. He showed her his fake ID that made he and Max 'Medical Staff' from the nearest police precinct which was almost 50 miles away down in the next valley.
She barely looked at the IDS before buzzing them in past the doors.
“Down there, keep to your right,” she told them. “Might be sleeping.”
Max eagerly pushed past Logan and took up at a brisk pace down the dimly lit passage. She stopped and raised her head, smelling the air.
“He’s here.” She whispered in soft disbelief.
Ignoring the protests of the nurses, Max entered each room, swinging back curtains that were in her way and opening closed doors that said ‘Do not Enter’.
“Alec!” She finally just yelled out. “Alec!”
Logan tried to make reassuring faces to the flustered and angry staff but he felt Max’s urgency just the same. He wanted to see Alec laying in one of these beds. He wanted to shake his hand and start figuring out a way to get him the hell out of here and back home.
It turned out to be the last room. Logan followed in Max’s wake, the shrill rip of the curtain being pulled away revealed the man that lay hurt, his bleeding wounds staunched. He turned to look at them in alarm, his movements weakened by injury but his scent... The smell struck Logan as he got to Max’s side. It was low and heavy like burnt sugar, scorched vanilla and fresh clean sweat.
Logan swallowed and stepped back in confusion.
“Wh-who are you?” Max demanded.
The man was made of a large grade, tall, wide, pale hair and paler eyes. Made just normal enough to pass in society, but just odd enough to betray what powers might lay beneath. Logan kept his confusion in but Max made her frustration be heard out loud, advancing and clutching the collar of the medical gown in a low growl that made the man in the bed visibly nervous.
Whoever this X-5 was, he wasn’t Alec.
“Did you live in Seattle?” Logan asked softly.
“Y-yes sir.” He managed. “Worked for the city department. Mostly sewer work.”
With the water mains. Logan sat down with a sigh, White must have gotten this poor bastard almost right off the bat. He saw the now familiar strain in the transgenic’s muscles, the frantic energy he kept in check despite his injuries. The way he kept looking away from them both, especially Max.
“Are there others? Where you were taken?”
Max waited for his answer intently.
“White he, he, I don’t know. They just disappear. One at a time.” The X said softly. “I barely got out after the fires started, 494, he was with me but by the time I made it to the truck… they’d got him-“
Max stood. "494-"
Logan found himself standing too. “Alec, you saw Alec. You saw Alec there?”
The X-5 looked down, shame coloring his pale skin. "Dead." The transgenic breathed out painfully. "No way he got out of there-"
"But you saw him! Alive? Where?" Max’s heart was beating so fast her breathing matched its rhythm, her grip on the transgenic tight and threatening.
“I saw him in the labs almost every day,” He mumbled. “49- Alec, he- he made a plan, we’d rig the computer’s with a spiral virus so it would shut everything down. I don’t know how he did his end but I hacked into a terminal when they left me locked down in a physicians prep room for a few minutes.”
Logan saw the pale blue eyes grow cloudy for a moment, the strange brand of fear the transgenics used plain on his face. They faced fear like children. Bewildered and confused.
“They were going to operate on me.”
The images of the photos of the dissected X-5 flashed briefly through Logan’s mind but he brushed them away. This X-5 had somehow escaped that fate and he was more or less safe. Logan looked up grimly the vitals that ran across an over head computer display. Although they were having a lucid conversation, this transgenic was in pretty bad shape. Multiple gun shot wounds had damaged him, and the blood they were giving him to replenish his supply was woefully the wrong and very human kind.
“It worked right away.” The X continued. “It started some fires. Turned off the lights. Then we just moved.”
Logan guessed this solider had been made for heavy nocturnal operations with no need for night vision equipment. It would explain the laborious sewer job and exactly why he was able to get out of a total power outage situation in a lock down facility and Alec somehow couldn’t.
He looked over at the other transgenic in the room. Her eyes were locked on the floor, her adrenaline finally waning, her hope shifted back to baffled confusion. Logan realized he’d just seen that look in the wounded X-5’s eyes. It was fear.
"Max?" Logan placed a hand on her arm, and swallowed nervously.
She sat back and gestured towards the door with her chin.
"Shut the door." She used the plastic tube going into the X-5's arm to wrap around her own upper arm.
Logan followed her curt directions to give them privacy.
"What are you doing?"
Max removed the needle from the transgenic's arm and slid it into her own flesh, making a circuit between them and bypassing the fluid that had been placed there.
"Saving his life."
Logan watched the dark red line travel quickly through the clear tubing and into the incision in the transgenic's arm. Max's expression was flat. There was nothing like compassion or sympathy in her eyes, not even relief when the transgenic's pained breaths grew slow and easy and his heart rate evened out. She was detached, eyes staring straight ahead, seeing little.
Suddenly her head snapped up.
"Who are you?"
A young girl had entered the room.
Logan watched Max study the girl carefully.
He did the same. He didn't know if it was all his exposure to transgenics or just simple observance that caused him to begin to recognize the certain traits of Manticore, but he'd never seen anyone like her before. Unlike the white blue eyes of the wounded transgenic in the bed, her eyes were a shade of brown he'd never seen. It was as if she was lit up from the inside, her eyes flashing like an animal with eye shine. She seemed to know they were strange and kept her gaze trained downwards as much as possible. Her hair was too gold, her skin was perfectly pale.
"X-6." Was all Max said softly.
"Are you okay? What's your name?" Logan asked, overwhelmed slightly by her youth. He had never seen a transgenic this age, her bruised face and wide frightened eyes made him half sick.
"She can't talk." Max muttered to him.
Logan watched as they exchanged hand signs, quickly and effortlessly as any other foreign language. He wasn't sure how Max knew, and he wondered if her muteness was engineered or some kind of horrible mistake a scientist made in her genetic mapping. Maybe it was less than a mistake. Maybe it was function they hadn't deemed completely necessary for her role in their plans. With a sick sigh, Logan wondered if the men who had bruised her up had even known she was unable to answer their questions even if she had wanted to.
“She drove the truck that got them out of there.” Max said out loud.
She turned her attention back to the girl.
"Tell me how to find this place."
The X-6 nodded.
It was amazing all that could happen in the span of a few hours.
The auxiliary power had finally come up on level one. The second third levels below were still in total darkness, crews working the floors with flashlights to reach the transformers that had been blown with the computer override that jumped all the circuit breakers and let them cycle until they fried.
Transgenics. They were pretty clever when you gave them even the slightest of chances. But that was what this place had been assembled for. A place for no chance at all. But it had still happened.
And it had happened on his watch.
A large bank of computer monitors on a large metal rack stood tall and in his path. With strength he shouldn’t have he flung it out of his way, shattering glass and showering glittering sparks behind him. The major fires that had started were under control but teams were still working on the smaller more prolific electronic fires. They had had worked their countless ways into the walls and into some of the third floor bottom labs.
Agent Ames White grabbed a flash light from one of the men busy taking a panel down off the wall, wires flashing and flickering with blue fire across the corridor floors.
"Where is he?" Ames asked. He was surprised at the sound of calm in his voice.
"Found him down by the loading dock sir."
Ames nodded in the dim chaotic light of flash lights and hurried movement of people working, walking and talking in every direction. It was strangely quiet, the core of the subterranean structure shut down, leaving them all in murky empty echo of their own footsteps and the brief hectic spurts of information on the radios from the men chasing what was left of the fires.
He was surprised the three transgenics had gotten as far as the level 1 loading area, and another emotional sensation he owned all together relayed just how he felt about the fact that two of the things had managed to flee the facilities premises that way. In the fire, in the dark, with his own personal guards laying down a spread of bullets that should have cut them all into pieces. So many pieces they'd have trouble putting them back to together for sale. However, the transgenics had eluded them and vanished into the surrounding woods like ghosts. He had a few helicopters up looking for them as soon as he could get them in the air. But they hadn't spotted anything but an abandoned military truck. The canyons and ravines appeared empty.
But they left one behind.
Or it left itself behind so the other two had a chance. Who knew what transpired in the world of transgenic ethics? The X-6 female was no major loss, her ovaries and other marketable items had already been extracted, but the male X-5 had already been sold. Ames had already cashed the proverbial check so to speak. Ames White was extremely unhappy.
When he finally got to the utility room they had converted to secure the remaining X-5, he paused for a moment before he motioned for the crossed machine guns to part to allow him access.
There he was.
X5-494
The bullets hadn't quite ripped him apart but they had gotten him in the upper right and lower quadrant of his body. He'd put up some fight, overturned boxes of sampling tubes lay scattered, an entire metal shelf fallen on its side. Behind the chaos, he heard him panting. His blood pumped out through his wounds as a medic pressed a wad of gauze heavy over the worst of it. He lay in a heap, his legs sprawled, sweat making his clothes settle close against his skin. He was ended even if he wouldn't admit it. To White, this meeting would have been easier had he been unconscious. He could manage the scent without the rest. His eyes were bright and alert and trained on him.
White blinked several times to clear his head with the onslaught of scents combined in the confines of the small room. The smell of him boiled white hot with the mixture of the persistent scent of fire. The blood added to the burn of melted plastic, singed circuit boards, smoldering fiberglass insulation, and the black oily smoke that lingered up around the ceilings. Thick and heavy, like the red blood flowing from the wounds, Ames felt it fuel and join with his rage, a sweet melding of emotions that he never found very far apart in the first place, desire and violence fusing into one solid need.
"G-Good to see ya Ames." 494 wheezed, his teeth chattering as his body was settling nicely into shock. "I think I messed up your tree fort."
“You.” Ames White said. “Why is it always you?”
494 tried to shrug and managed a weak smile from where he lay on the floor.
"Everyone." Ames hissed. "Out.”
Medics and armed men looked at each other before they wordlessly complied, filing after each other in the small space and out the door.
Ames knelt over him, his anger surpassing any rational reaction he could have ever normally exacted. To his surprise, he found a hungry calm. This body under him, the smell of his life pumping slowly out into the air, the transgenic's short panting exhales of pain. Heavy and sweet, low and burning not unlike the unchecked fires that dotted the maze of his landscape.
Conquering his distaste, Ames pushed his hand under the issued shirt, the thick hot wet fabric bunching up through his fingers, revealing one of the bullet wounds, and 494's chest, stained red and slick. 494's angry hiss was hot on his face.
“Why… why is it whenever I turn around, I always find you?”
He didn't want the freak to speak. Didn't want to hear the retort through shaky breaths, the false bravado. He pressed his cheek against the transgenic’s, like an animal in greeting, the oily feel of blood letting him slide his face gently until their chins met. 494 was staring at him, startled into remaining still. His eyes stayed wide while Ames's thumb pulled down his lip and jaw, opening his mouth to his own, tongue tasting the hot coppery tang of blood, inhaling all of his scents of anger, fear, pain.... Ames moaned a little into the X-5’s mouth, pushing him down under him, his hands pulling Alec's hips down, forcing his thighs apart. Pale red speckled hands came up weakly against Ames's chest and face.
Ames didn't mind the resistance. He preferred it, in fact. He marveled at the fact that the hormone still was affecting them both even now, after so much damage had been sustained. When so much was there to lose, chemistry still ruled them both like mindless fools. 494's eyes half closed, his breathing going too fast, too hard. From Ames's proximity or his pain. Or both.
"D-Don’t…uhhdon’t-“
Ames’ shut him up. Sitting forward and pressing him down by the chest, he filled his mouth with hot damp flesh, holding a hand full of his short cropped hair, and running a hand over hard lines of the muscle, sliding over barely tended open wounds just to make the thing under him cry out in louder noises when he wanted to hear them. He withdrew and leaned down to cup the X-5’s chin in his grip.
“You think it’s been bad?" Ames whispered angrily into his mouth as he worked his hand slow and messy between the transgenics thighs. “Do you think this has been bad for you?”
494 cried out with a cut off groan when Ames let what he provided as pleasure shift to pain and back again. 494 struggled to look at him, panic and humiliation mixed hopelessly in his eyes. Ames tasted the blood that had pooled at the base of his throat, biting down into it and licking his lips.
"Do you even know what pain is?"
494 moaned as the hands worked further into his issued fatigues, sliding them down his sweat slicked thighs, Ames felt his skin glow like fire at the thought of bringing the freak this close to it all the while he was slowly dying. It was too stifling, his flesh igniting wherever it touched the trangenic’s. Fighting to breathe, his mouth found the side of the throat, inhaling in the soft hollow of flesh below the ear, the scent driving him as he pushed impossibly slow. His mind barely registering the overwhelming pleasure of it, his arms crushing the prone body closer, relishing the choked cries of pain that were smothered in his mouth as he brutally tasted what he wanted.
He couldn’t stop. He couldn’t take himself one inch away from the smell and feel of it. His hands gripped the sweaty undersides of knees and pushed the struggling transgenic hard against the wall. It was all he had wanted since he’d seen the cursed X half naked and alone up on top of the Space Needle. It was all he could think about when he passed the labs and caught scent of them down there, unguarded and shackled. It was unrelenting. It was unbelievable. It was disgusting.
Ames stood, his mouth smeared red with blood, his clothes and hands stained with it. His heart pounded in his ears, every fiber of his being wanted to lay back down over that body and make it comply to him. Open to him. Come for him. Over and over again until there wasn’t a breath left in its body…
“You… you did this to me Alec.” Ames spit. “I didn’t do this to you.”
Breathless, the transgenic painfully considered him from the floor, still reeling from the contact, trying to get his clothes back where they had been before and failing.
Somehow he was smiling.
“Y-You, you called me Alec.”
“Medic!”
The door opened again and uniformed men stepped in with their equipment. They paused at Agent White at first, thinking perhaps he had been attacked just as they stood several meters away just outside the door.
But they quickly saw their error and casting their eyes down, went to attend the transgenic that lay struggling for breath on the floor.
This torture was going to end.
At least for Ames White.
It had never been intended for Ordinaries. Its origins dated back to much crueler times. For himself, Ames thought quite highly of what he termed his enhanced little magic trick. The tank looked ordinary and in fact it was. Some wrought iron adjustments here and there to immobilize and a tacked on telemetry device to denote progress and the whole thing was really quite fundamental.
He put them in alive and took them out his.
And most importantly, behind all that glass and all those gallons of water, Ames White couldn’t smell a God damn thing.
"Sir?"
The tech, clad in gear reserved for operations in sub-zero terrain, moved urgently to speak with Ames.
"Report."
"We are approaching the 25 minute mark."
"Vitals?"
"Unstable. At this stage harmful."
Harmful was a soft word in Ames' language.
"Irreversible?"
The tech's eyes traveled swiftly to the neon readings of the LCD screen against the tank's surface.
"Not yet." He admitted reluctantly.
Ames smiled.
"Good." He clapped the man on the shoulder and took a step forward.
It was truly a thing of beauty.
He passed his hand over the chill surface, wiping away the frosted condensation.
494 had been stripped to his thermal trainers, a single electrode strapped to his wrist. Curled in a fetal position at the bottom of the tank, head bent to knees, eyes closed, still as a preserved specimen.
But his vitals showed he was very much alive.
The water had turned a sickly pale pink from his wounds, the blood viscous and dark from lack of oxygen, pumping sluggishly into the clear fluid. It had slowed minutes ago, congealing with the frigid water.
His blood was a study unto itself.
The oxygen binding molecules of hemoglobin in his blood had been designed to survive extreme conditions, fixing with greater tenacity to the blood cells, renewing almost instantaneously. He had been under for 25 minutes. No chance for oxygen renewal. His heart recirculating old concentrated blood over and over and over.
An Ordinary would have expired within minutes.
Even his transgenic physiology employed the same survival mechanics. The freezing temperature of the water had slowed his metabolism, his heart rhythm decreased into brachycardia. It would not be long now before it stopped altgether but even then he could survive a few minutes longer before everything shut down, went offline, got spoiled.
It was very possible that when they pulled him out this time, his brain would be permanently affected. Oh well, liabilities were liabilities. The team in Johannesburg would have to accept some damage in transit.
He had attempted to free himself at first, struggling against the heavy iron lid at the top, the only way in or out of his aqueous environment. Both ankles had been strapped down with weights. That hadn't stopped him from trying a little. He'd gotten the message quick enough when the firm plexiglass refused to give way beneath his powerful kicks, his fists useless though thrown with precision.
He'd stopped moving altogether.
Which was how Ames found him now.
Slowly he knelt down to the transgenic's level, peered at the pale, bloodless face. Proximity to the X5 no longer had any effect, the frigid temperature had tampered with the makeup of his blood so profoundly that it quieted the hormone raging in his system. Even outside the water, he knew he would feel nothing, even if he touched the cold, hard flesh. He had ceased to sweat, did not leave any scent, even the molecules in his saliva would be nulled. Grinning, he tapped hard on the glass.
The transgenic's eyes snapped open reflexively, wide and unseeing. Startled, Ames withdrew.
"Alright." He said.
The surrounding unit acted with haste. A guard in a wetsuit was lowered into the tank to retrieve 494, unbinding his shackles and hauling him up to the surface.
"He's not breathing sir." The guard reported. "No cardiac activity."
The cyanotic blue of 494's lips and the lack of response to the beam of light shone directly in his eye did not faze Ames in the least. The limp body was transferred quickly to the cement floor, the team of medical personnel swarming around him. They knew what to do. After all, this was their third time.
Ames waited patiently against the door as they brought 494 back from the dead. Water was suctioned from paralyzed lungs, irritated back into some mimicry of function. Compressions and epinephrine restarted his heart. The rush of air choked him, offending and foreign in his airway. The strained wheeze was music to his ears.
"We have a pulse."
Ames took this as his signal to begin.
Coughing and shuddering, 494 moaned. A blanket was thrown over his body in a rudimentary attempt to conserve heat. Ames crouched down beside him.
"Permission to start a warm saline drip--" The medic watching the readings on the LCD ventured nervously.
"Denied."
Ames did not acknowledge him, his attention focused on 494.
"Welcome back." He smiled.
"Hey Ames." Alec's voice rasped, barely audible through his shivers.
"Amazing." Ames whistled. "How you can't seem to die."
"Like a roach." Though his teeth chattered convulsively, Alec managed a smile.
Ames leaned in, grasping Alec's chin in his hand, his smell almost gone to nothing. "I've been more than exceedingly kind up until this point 494, I've done everything short of tucking you into bed at night.“
If he thought this transgenic knew even vaguely where the escaped X series had gone he would have stripped his skin slowly from his body until he spilled it out like his body would everything else. But what he really wanted to know would warrant more persuasion than that. And his buyers had set him on a time table.
“Tell me now. While we still have time. Where...is....452?"
"D-Disneyworld."
Ames sighed.
"Put him in again."
No one moved. Ames felt the back of his eyes grow hot.
"That was an order." He repeated.
The head of the medical unit intervened.
"Sir. He's too unstable. If we put him under again, the damage to his internal organs will make him unviable. He'll be worthless on the market."
Ames gritted his teeth. On the floor, Alec's voice rose up to taunt him weakly.
"Nyah-nyah-nyahhhh."
Ames smiled shortly. "You see, you have lack of faith in our 494. I think he’ll do just fine. I want him back in. And drop the temperature by 10 degrees.”
The transgenic's eyes closed, turning his head quickly to the side so he could cough up more fluid from his lungs.
"N-no p-problem." He choked, fighting every word. "Maybe I'll freeze s-solid."
Ames sighed. "That would be convenient, your new owners want you intact."
The transgenic shuddered violently, seized by another fit of coughing.
"And unfortunately, alive." Ames turned to the medic waiting in the background. At his nod, the man knelt down and prodded the inside of Alec's arm with latex gloved fingers. It took him almost a minute to locate the pale blue vein beneath the stark white flesh.
Weakly, the transgenic obeyed the order to make a fist, clenching trembling fingers. He jerked mildly when the needle entered his flesh, warm saline pumping at a timed rate through his fractured system. Within a minute, his tremors slowed and ceased, his color evening out. The medic leaned over to get a pressure reading.
"Stabilizing."
Ames looked down at him.
"Your new owners will adore you. They have you scheduled for all kinds of fun things. Rejection studies, healing factors, regeneration. Just think? You'll help advance a generation."
"Yay." The transgenic lay unmoving on the floor.
He could see the pale lips tremble lightly, a weak smile forming, eyes empty and glazed. He'd seen that look before. In the eyes of the executed and the lost, on souls who had nothing left to lose.
He was cracking.
"We ready?" He asked the medic.
"Affirmative."
"Don't want to come back...." The transgenic breathed weakly as hands reached for him, lifting him. "Stop... want... to stop."
Ames briefly imagined the pain involved to be cycled back and forth from the edge and back again. Repeatedly and without pause. It must be close to unbearable.
"If you stop for good, I don't get paid."
494 barked a tired laugh as he was wrenched up and held in place, leaning limply against the shoulder of the guard. Ames spoke close to his ear.
"The sooner you tell me where I can find 452. The sooner this ends."
"That's..." The transgenic wheezed with difficulty, a weak laugh making his shoulders shake. "...exceedingly ...kind."
"Put him in."
"Again." The transgenic was trying not to laugh now, his shoulders shook uncontrollably as he fought a strange smile. "Again. And again. And again! I'll come back ya know. I always come back!"
He wouldn't shut up. Not when the heavy rusted iron lid was lifted. Not when his hands and ankles were bound once more and weighted. Not when he was lowered slowly back into the cold pinkish hell.
"What are you afraid of Ames?" With his last breath before he went under, his gaze flickering to one of the lab techs and addressing her instead. "That your parents will find out?"
Something there, within all the X-5 stubborn refusal to bend, had finally in fact, snapped into pieces.
"Find out." Alec sputtered and gasped as the water rushed up to his face. "Find out wh-what you like to do--"
The smart oddly placed comments had started to blur into some frantic lunacy. Like all the others that Ames had tested through these trials, they finally gone someplace beyond the pain. Beyond fear. If the transgenic had ever shied from the concept of his own demise he didn't any longer. He feared returning back from it. Ames smiled as the transgenic momentarily thrashed when he became completely submerged once again.
They always came out at the other end all his.
All completely his.
tbc
part 7
Cross posted to jam_pony_fic
Cross posted to darkangelfic
Cross posted to x5_darkangel_x5