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last01standingTitle- Pocketful of Lies
Part- 10 of 12
Rating- PG-13
Summary- After hearing a news report on the disappearance of Eyes Only, Max is slowly drawn into the mystery of what really happened to Logan Cale…[ML but Alec friendly]
Disclaimer- I do not own Dark Angel
Parts- 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12
CHAPTER TEN
“That’s insane, Max,” Alec said quickly. “No one could have survived that fall. I wouldn’t have survived that fall. White’s dead. Hell, he an obituary, a funeral!”
“So did Logan,” Max whispered. “He had a grave and a funeral. We saw it.”
Max had watched White fall, tumbling end over end until hitting the pavement with a sickening thud she could hear from hundreds of feet above. It had took her nearly an hour to maneuvered Alec’s broken body down from the Space Needle and by the time she’d got to the ground, there’d been a crowd of people surrounding White’s corpse. She’d been preoccupied with getting Alec some medical help.
The newspaper had reported White’s death the day after. There had been a mere two paragraph, speculating that it had been a suicide and noting that Ames White was to be cremated. His ashes had been scattered into the ocean.
There was no way anyone could survive a fall like that.
“Max,” Alec insisted and she could read the blind terror plainly on his features. “He’s dead Max. He has to be.”
“I never saw the body,” she whispered. “I never felt like I needed to. There was no way he could have survived.”
But somehow, he had survived. Max cursed herself for her failure. She should have checked, should have made sure he was dead. After the Familiar at Harbor Lights last year she should have suspected the impossible.
“I figured it out,” Logan admitted from behind her. “One of my contacts spotted him and gave me the heads up. I was trying to warn you.”
The pages, Max realized, they’d been too spaced out for them have been cries for help. White would have cut off all Logan’s communication as soon as he had Logan in his clutches. She could have stopped this. She could have been there to save him… if only she’d listened.
“Say it is White…” Alec conceded from behind her, taking several deep, steadying breaths.
“It’s White,” she interrupted with absolute certainty. “I know it.”
“Now how the hell could you possibly be sure!?”
“Because it looked like this after he took you!” she screamed. “The struggle, the numbers on the wall…” Her voice dropped. “It’s the same thing. There’s only a handful of people who saw knew about this. White wants me to know it’s him. He wants me to know he’s still alive.”
“If White wants you to know, then why the hell would he go through all this trouble to make you forget? Max it doesn’t make any sense.” He grabbed her roughly by the shoulders, voice low and dangerous. “Why the hell would he go through all this trouble to set up a familiar crime scene and then erase the guy he was taking from your memory? A scene like this, they’re looking to draw you out. They probably had a trap all set up for you. They probably figured you’d to come running the second the second you saw this place. But if you didn’t remember this Cale guy, there would be no reason for you to even check Sandeman’s, much less come running to help him.”
Max glanced behind her. Logan had vanished again. There was a little voice in her head that whispered, this time it might be for good.
Cy’s pale eyes flickered in her memory.
“I’d do it again.”
“Son of a bitch,” she muttered venomously. “That son of a bitch.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Alec hissed.
“Cy,” she said flatly. “This time, I’m really going to kill him.”
***
Alec tried to talk her out of it. He defended Cy at every turn.
Max didn’t know how he could do it, wondered how he could possibly be friends with someone who had nearly gotten him killed. If it hadn’t been for Cy sending them chasing false leads, she would have been able to spare Alec days of torture at White’s hands. And yet, when they got back to Terminal City and approached the Psy-ops building, Alec stepped smoothly in front of her and blocked her entrance.
“I can’t let you go in there,” Alec said firmly. “You have to slow down for a moment. You have to think.”
“Slow down,” Max echoed incredulously. “Logan could be dying and you’re telling me to slow down and take it easy on Cy. Did you forget what he did? Did you forget how he let you suffer?”
Somewhere along the way it had started to rain, and the sound of the soft droplets against tin roofs seemed impossibly loud to Max’s ears. Alec didn’t move, didn’t even flinch. “You don’t know the whole story, do you Max?”
She didn’t know the whole story. She didn’t know why Logan was gone or who he even was, didn’t know how had Cy gained Alec’s trust in the wake of his betrayal, didn’t know how Alec could keep so calm through all of this after White had broken him so thoroughly, she didn’t know… “Explain it to me then.”
Alec froze for the barest fraction of a second, a look of complete surprise flashing over his features. “I trust him,” Alec explained awkwardly. “The guy makes mistakes, but he’s as human as the rest of us. He means well.”
A red haze threatened to overtake her vision. Mole, Stat, and now Alec… They always insisted despite everything that Cy meant well, that Cy’s heart was in the right place. She opened her mouth to retort, but Alec cut her off smoothly. “You know, he isn’t even Psy-ops? Not originally at least. The kid spent six years in my unit, he was X-5.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Max asked, “I know Manticore. Psy-ops were a different line. No mixing of the test tubes.”
“How do you think Psy-ops got started, Max?” Alec asked lowly. “I mean, Manticore had been playing with coercion techniques and human statisticians, but those weren’t new concepts. There have always been people who could make you confess and people who could play the odds better than anyone. Full out Psychics on the other hand… I don’t think Manticore had even thought about cooking up a psychic…”
Alec swallowed, and took a deep breath before continuing, “And one night Cy started screaming in his sleep. We ignored him for the most part. No one wanted to report it to Lydecker, because we all knew what would happen. Cy had never been physically up to par adding screaming nightmares to the mix it was practically a death sentence.” There was a far away look in her friend’s eyes, like he was stuck years ago in the barracks of Manticore. “On the sixth day, Cy went up to Lydecker before training and told him X5-601 was going to die. Lydecker took Cy out of the wing, put him under evaluation. Two days later, 601 die in his sleep, a seizure. No one even heard a thing. They hauled Cy in for testing, looking for the genetic fluke that let him see the future. By just being alive the kid practically created the Psy-ops department.”
He leveled his gaze on Max, suddenly back in the present again. “So, yeah, maybe his morals are a little fucked up, and maybe you’ve never seen eye to eye with him and maybe you think that he screws things up at every turn but everything he does has a reason and when it comes to those visions of his, Cy is never, ever wrong.”
“This reason of his,” Max said slowly, “do you think it’s worth getting someone killed? Someone like you? Or Logan?”
Alec clenched his jaw. “I won’t let you kill him, Max. I’m not saying I like the guy, or even that I haven’t thought of making him pay myself, but I’m not going to let you kill him.”
“This doesn’t change anything,” she muttered, holding Alec’s gaze. “Cy still owes me some answers.”
Alec didn’t move from the doorway. Rain slid slowly down her back, chilling her to the bone. “Move,” she hissed venomously.
For a long second, Alec held his ground, but finally, he relented and stepped sideways to let her through. “I hope to God you know what you’re doing, Max.”
***
Cy was waiting for her, sitting cross-legged on his sagging bed with the door opened wide. “Figured it wasn’t worth running,” he said with a rueful smile. “Say what you want about me, but I can take my licks.
She got the feeling that Cy was talking more to Alec then to her and for some reason that made her blood boil. “Care to tell me why you might need those licks, Cy?”
“You’re the one storming into this place,” Cy retorted folding his gangly pale arms across his chest. “You tell me.”
“Fine,” Max snipped. “Alec and I just got back from Sandeman’s.”
The color drained from Cy’s already pale face. “Why the hell would you go there?”
“A little bird told me,” Max said sarcastically, taking three steps so she stood towering over Cy’s seated form. “What I want to know, is why White would go through the trouble to recreate the entire scene of Alec’s abduction only to erase all memory of his hostage. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.”
Cy stood up slowly, long limbs unfolding as he rose. Cy was always taller than she expected. He was skinny and round shouldered with a tendency to hunch and folding into himself to project the image of someone six inches smaller than he actually was. “Are you going to accuse me of something or are you just going to stand there?”
“You needed to stall me, didn’t you?” Max whispered to Cy’s chest. “You knew what was going to happen and you didn’t do a thing to stop it.”
I’d do it again, his voice echoed in her head, over and over again, proclaiming his betrayal.
Cy didn’t answer, just stared at her with those pale green eyes.
She punched him hard in the face. He recoiled in surprise, blood leaking slowly out of his nose, the only color on his washed out face. Max’s hands shot to his throat, grasping the pale skin. “Tell me!”
“You’re not going to kill me,” Cy choked smugly. “I’ve seen how I die and Alec’s the only one in the room who’s packing.”
Alec dove after her, pulling her grip off Cy before she could do any serious damage.“What the hell are you doing Max?”
“He knows,” she insisted, “he knows what happened to Logan. He knows why I can’t remember.”
“I saw it, you know,” Cy said, pinching his nose to stop the blood flow. “At first I thought it was just a dream, hoped it was just a dream, but with me it never is.”
“You could have told someone,” Alec said evenly, “could have given us the heads up.”
“Would you have believed a word I said?” Cy snapped. “If I had come to you, would you have even listened? No, you would have said, that’s just Cy. He can’t be trusted. Without even taking consideration to the fact that Cy’s a goddamned psychic!”
Max opened her mouth to retort, but to her surprise, found that Cy’s words rang true. “You could have tried to stop it yourself,” Max said, lamely.
“And some cavalry that would have been,” Cy sneered, “I’m not combat ready. I didn’t spend my childhood training like you. I spent it in a lab getting prodded by curious scientists. Half the things I see can’t be stopped. It was a tactical decision. If I’d done what you wanted, I would have been killed. Just like your friend Joshua.”
Her heart clenched at the name. Her anger boiled up at gall behind its use. She would have torn Cy’s head off if Alec hadn’t had her in a firm immobile grip. “What did you do to me?” she hissed. “Why can’t I remember?”
“You give me way too much credit,” Cy said as a grin stretched across his ghostly pale face. “When it comes right down to it, I’m a really shitty psychic. I got the short end of both deals. Not strong enough to be a soldier, not skilled enough to really see the future. It’s what you get for being a genetic freak amongst genetic freaks. I told you everything I know about extractions.”
“You’re lying.”
“You just wish I was.”
“Where is White keeping him?” Max demanded.
“I thought White was dead,” said Cy with faux innocence. “Something about falling off a Space Needle.”
“That’s it, Max,” Alec said with authority. “We’re leaving. He’s not talking and we don’t have time to get it out of him.”
“He knows,” Max spat. “He did this.”
“Max, it doesn’t matter,” Alec whispered into her ear. “What matters is getting to Logan before it’s too late.”
She knew Alec was right. No matter how much Max wanted to peel Cy’s milky white skin off his body and listen to him scream, every second wasted was another second of Logan dying by White’s hands. She composed herself and turned to walk out of the room.
“You know,” Cy’s voice drifted after her. “You were one of the first things I ever saw; back when I still thought I was crazy.”
Max paused, but didn’t turn to look at him.
“You were dead,” Cy continued as if in a daze. “Gunshot wound. A bullet hole smack in the middle of your forehead. Blood everywhere. And White stand over you saying they could proceed as planned now that 452 was eliminated. I had no idea what he was talking about, but I got the feeling that it was something bad. Pitch it however you want, but I’m not the enemy, Max.”
“Let’s go,” Alec growled into her ears. “He’s trying to stall us.”
“Be careful,” Cy said softly. “Don’t do anything stupid.”
She let Alec push her out the door and into the tidy, orderly hallway. He shut the door on the way out. “Max,” he said. “I told you this was a bad idea. We’re wasting time. If those phone calls are any indication, White’s had Cale for going on six days and I can guarantee you, ordinaries won’t last half as long as I did. We’ve got to find out where White is if you want to save this Logan guy of yours. At this point, we have narrowed down to ‘hopefully nearby.’ And we’re not even considering the fact that we’re probably walking into a trap.”
Alec’s words were static in her ears. The task was nearly insurmountable and every moment wasted would cost Logan a little more of his precious blood. Max was on the verge of unraveling.
“I’m sorry,” a new voice said. It took Max a long moment to locate the source. It was Dee, studying her with an intense blue stare. “I didn’t know.” The was a tremor in her soft voice and Max couldn’t help but picture her as just another normal kid who’d broken something her parents loved.
“I’m sure it’s not your fault, kiddo,” Alec said, crouching down next to her. “People make mistakes. Why don’t you go find Stat and…”
“It is my fault,” Dee insisted forcefully. “I should have guessed it was wrong, but he outranks me. I’ve got to listen to him.”
“Dee,” Max said, more sharply than she intended to. “Who are you talking about?”
“Cy,” she answered, nearly inaudibly. “He brought me a picture and asked me to take the man away. He said I was helping. He said people would die if I didn’t help him.”
“You did it,” Alec said with a little disbelief. “Took him out of people’s minds? Is that even possible?”
Max glanced at Alec. “Still think Cy’s one of the good guys. Christ, Alec, she’s just a kid.”
“He said I was the only one who could do it,” Dee whispered. “He said it would help, said I could be a soldier.” She looked up at Max, eyes shining with unshed tears. “You’re mad. I’m sorry. I didn’t know it was wrong. I shouldn’t have done it. I didn’t want to disobey a direct order.”
“We’re not at Manticore anymore,” Max said, crouching over to put a hand on the girl’s shoulder. “You don’t always have to obey orders.”
“Yes, Ma’am,” she sniffed.
“If you did it,” Max said as realization hit her, “if you took the memories of this guy away, you can put it back. Make everything how it should be again.”
“That’s just the thing,” Dee said miserably. “I’ve been trying. Ever since you can the first time, I’ve been trying to undo it, but I can’t. Don’t be mad. I-I.” She hiccupped. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right, Dee,” Max said softly and she’d surprised to find that she wasn’t mad with the girl. She was a victim of circumstances, an unfortunate bystander who got caught up in a war. Just like Joshua. Just like Alec. Just like Logan. “There’s another way you can help.”
The girl pulled herself up tall, standing at attention.
“Where is he now?” Max asked gently. “Where is Logan, the guy Cy made you erase?”
Dee frowned, furrowing her brow in concentration. “You already know where he is,” she said finally, opening an eye and nodding towards Alec. “Same place you found him last time.”
“The Space Needle,” Max whispered, turning to Alec. “We need to move.”
To be concluded| 11 |
Part- 10 of 12
Rating- PG-13
Summary- After hearing a news report on the disappearance of Eyes Only, Max is slowly drawn into the mystery of what really happened to Logan Cale…[ML but Alec friendly]
Disclaimer- I do not own Dark Angel
Parts- 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12
“That’s insane, Max,” Alec said quickly. “No one could have survived that fall. I wouldn’t have survived that fall. White’s dead. Hell, he an obituary, a funeral!”
“So did Logan,” Max whispered. “He had a grave and a funeral. We saw it.”
Max had watched White fall, tumbling end over end until hitting the pavement with a sickening thud she could hear from hundreds of feet above. It had took her nearly an hour to maneuvered Alec’s broken body down from the Space Needle and by the time she’d got to the ground, there’d been a crowd of people surrounding White’s corpse. She’d been preoccupied with getting Alec some medical help.
The newspaper had reported White’s death the day after. There had been a mere two paragraph, speculating that it had been a suicide and noting that Ames White was to be cremated. His ashes had been scattered into the ocean.
There was no way anyone could survive a fall like that.
“Max,” Alec insisted and she could read the blind terror plainly on his features. “He’s dead Max. He has to be.”
“I never saw the body,” she whispered. “I never felt like I needed to. There was no way he could have survived.”
But somehow, he had survived. Max cursed herself for her failure. She should have checked, should have made sure he was dead. After the Familiar at Harbor Lights last year she should have suspected the impossible.
“I figured it out,” Logan admitted from behind her. “One of my contacts spotted him and gave me the heads up. I was trying to warn you.”
The pages, Max realized, they’d been too spaced out for them have been cries for help. White would have cut off all Logan’s communication as soon as he had Logan in his clutches. She could have stopped this. She could have been there to save him… if only she’d listened.
“Say it is White…” Alec conceded from behind her, taking several deep, steadying breaths.
“It’s White,” she interrupted with absolute certainty. “I know it.”
“Now how the hell could you possibly be sure!?”
“Because it looked like this after he took you!” she screamed. “The struggle, the numbers on the wall…” Her voice dropped. “It’s the same thing. There’s only a handful of people who saw knew about this. White wants me to know it’s him. He wants me to know he’s still alive.”
“If White wants you to know, then why the hell would he go through all this trouble to make you forget? Max it doesn’t make any sense.” He grabbed her roughly by the shoulders, voice low and dangerous. “Why the hell would he go through all this trouble to set up a familiar crime scene and then erase the guy he was taking from your memory? A scene like this, they’re looking to draw you out. They probably had a trap all set up for you. They probably figured you’d to come running the second the second you saw this place. But if you didn’t remember this Cale guy, there would be no reason for you to even check Sandeman’s, much less come running to help him.”
Max glanced behind her. Logan had vanished again. There was a little voice in her head that whispered, this time it might be for good.
Cy’s pale eyes flickered in her memory.
“I’d do it again.”
“Son of a bitch,” she muttered venomously. “That son of a bitch.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Alec hissed.
“Cy,” she said flatly. “This time, I’m really going to kill him.”
Alec tried to talk her out of it. He defended Cy at every turn.
Max didn’t know how he could do it, wondered how he could possibly be friends with someone who had nearly gotten him killed. If it hadn’t been for Cy sending them chasing false leads, she would have been able to spare Alec days of torture at White’s hands. And yet, when they got back to Terminal City and approached the Psy-ops building, Alec stepped smoothly in front of her and blocked her entrance.
“I can’t let you go in there,” Alec said firmly. “You have to slow down for a moment. You have to think.”
“Slow down,” Max echoed incredulously. “Logan could be dying and you’re telling me to slow down and take it easy on Cy. Did you forget what he did? Did you forget how he let you suffer?”
Somewhere along the way it had started to rain, and the sound of the soft droplets against tin roofs seemed impossibly loud to Max’s ears. Alec didn’t move, didn’t even flinch. “You don’t know the whole story, do you Max?”
She didn’t know the whole story. She didn’t know why Logan was gone or who he even was, didn’t know how had Cy gained Alec’s trust in the wake of his betrayal, didn’t know how Alec could keep so calm through all of this after White had broken him so thoroughly, she didn’t know… “Explain it to me then.”
Alec froze for the barest fraction of a second, a look of complete surprise flashing over his features. “I trust him,” Alec explained awkwardly. “The guy makes mistakes, but he’s as human as the rest of us. He means well.”
A red haze threatened to overtake her vision. Mole, Stat, and now Alec… They always insisted despite everything that Cy meant well, that Cy’s heart was in the right place. She opened her mouth to retort, but Alec cut her off smoothly. “You know, he isn’t even Psy-ops? Not originally at least. The kid spent six years in my unit, he was X-5.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Max asked, “I know Manticore. Psy-ops were a different line. No mixing of the test tubes.”
“How do you think Psy-ops got started, Max?” Alec asked lowly. “I mean, Manticore had been playing with coercion techniques and human statisticians, but those weren’t new concepts. There have always been people who could make you confess and people who could play the odds better than anyone. Full out Psychics on the other hand… I don’t think Manticore had even thought about cooking up a psychic…”
Alec swallowed, and took a deep breath before continuing, “And one night Cy started screaming in his sleep. We ignored him for the most part. No one wanted to report it to Lydecker, because we all knew what would happen. Cy had never been physically up to par adding screaming nightmares to the mix it was practically a death sentence.” There was a far away look in her friend’s eyes, like he was stuck years ago in the barracks of Manticore. “On the sixth day, Cy went up to Lydecker before training and told him X5-601 was going to die. Lydecker took Cy out of the wing, put him under evaluation. Two days later, 601 die in his sleep, a seizure. No one even heard a thing. They hauled Cy in for testing, looking for the genetic fluke that let him see the future. By just being alive the kid practically created the Psy-ops department.”
He leveled his gaze on Max, suddenly back in the present again. “So, yeah, maybe his morals are a little fucked up, and maybe you’ve never seen eye to eye with him and maybe you think that he screws things up at every turn but everything he does has a reason and when it comes to those visions of his, Cy is never, ever wrong.”
“This reason of his,” Max said slowly, “do you think it’s worth getting someone killed? Someone like you? Or Logan?”
Alec clenched his jaw. “I won’t let you kill him, Max. I’m not saying I like the guy, or even that I haven’t thought of making him pay myself, but I’m not going to let you kill him.”
“This doesn’t change anything,” she muttered, holding Alec’s gaze. “Cy still owes me some answers.”
Alec didn’t move from the doorway. Rain slid slowly down her back, chilling her to the bone. “Move,” she hissed venomously.
For a long second, Alec held his ground, but finally, he relented and stepped sideways to let her through. “I hope to God you know what you’re doing, Max.”
Cy was waiting for her, sitting cross-legged on his sagging bed with the door opened wide. “Figured it wasn’t worth running,” he said with a rueful smile. “Say what you want about me, but I can take my licks.
She got the feeling that Cy was talking more to Alec then to her and for some reason that made her blood boil. “Care to tell me why you might need those licks, Cy?”
“You’re the one storming into this place,” Cy retorted folding his gangly pale arms across his chest. “You tell me.”
“Fine,” Max snipped. “Alec and I just got back from Sandeman’s.”
The color drained from Cy’s already pale face. “Why the hell would you go there?”
“A little bird told me,” Max said sarcastically, taking three steps so she stood towering over Cy’s seated form. “What I want to know, is why White would go through the trouble to recreate the entire scene of Alec’s abduction only to erase all memory of his hostage. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.”
Cy stood up slowly, long limbs unfolding as he rose. Cy was always taller than she expected. He was skinny and round shouldered with a tendency to hunch and folding into himself to project the image of someone six inches smaller than he actually was. “Are you going to accuse me of something or are you just going to stand there?”
“You needed to stall me, didn’t you?” Max whispered to Cy’s chest. “You knew what was going to happen and you didn’t do a thing to stop it.”
I’d do it again, his voice echoed in her head, over and over again, proclaiming his betrayal.
Cy didn’t answer, just stared at her with those pale green eyes.
She punched him hard in the face. He recoiled in surprise, blood leaking slowly out of his nose, the only color on his washed out face. Max’s hands shot to his throat, grasping the pale skin. “Tell me!”
“You’re not going to kill me,” Cy choked smugly. “I’ve seen how I die and Alec’s the only one in the room who’s packing.”
Alec dove after her, pulling her grip off Cy before she could do any serious damage.“What the hell are you doing Max?”
“He knows,” she insisted, “he knows what happened to Logan. He knows why I can’t remember.”
“I saw it, you know,” Cy said, pinching his nose to stop the blood flow. “At first I thought it was just a dream, hoped it was just a dream, but with me it never is.”
“You could have told someone,” Alec said evenly, “could have given us the heads up.”
“Would you have believed a word I said?” Cy snapped. “If I had come to you, would you have even listened? No, you would have said, that’s just Cy. He can’t be trusted. Without even taking consideration to the fact that Cy’s a goddamned psychic!”
Max opened her mouth to retort, but to her surprise, found that Cy’s words rang true. “You could have tried to stop it yourself,” Max said, lamely.
“And some cavalry that would have been,” Cy sneered, “I’m not combat ready. I didn’t spend my childhood training like you. I spent it in a lab getting prodded by curious scientists. Half the things I see can’t be stopped. It was a tactical decision. If I’d done what you wanted, I would have been killed. Just like your friend Joshua.”
Her heart clenched at the name. Her anger boiled up at gall behind its use. She would have torn Cy’s head off if Alec hadn’t had her in a firm immobile grip. “What did you do to me?” she hissed. “Why can’t I remember?”
“You give me way too much credit,” Cy said as a grin stretched across his ghostly pale face. “When it comes right down to it, I’m a really shitty psychic. I got the short end of both deals. Not strong enough to be a soldier, not skilled enough to really see the future. It’s what you get for being a genetic freak amongst genetic freaks. I told you everything I know about extractions.”
“You’re lying.”
“You just wish I was.”
“Where is White keeping him?” Max demanded.
“I thought White was dead,” said Cy with faux innocence. “Something about falling off a Space Needle.”
“That’s it, Max,” Alec said with authority. “We’re leaving. He’s not talking and we don’t have time to get it out of him.”
“He knows,” Max spat. “He did this.”
“Max, it doesn’t matter,” Alec whispered into her ear. “What matters is getting to Logan before it’s too late.”
She knew Alec was right. No matter how much Max wanted to peel Cy’s milky white skin off his body and listen to him scream, every second wasted was another second of Logan dying by White’s hands. She composed herself and turned to walk out of the room.
“You know,” Cy’s voice drifted after her. “You were one of the first things I ever saw; back when I still thought I was crazy.”
Max paused, but didn’t turn to look at him.
“You were dead,” Cy continued as if in a daze. “Gunshot wound. A bullet hole smack in the middle of your forehead. Blood everywhere. And White stand over you saying they could proceed as planned now that 452 was eliminated. I had no idea what he was talking about, but I got the feeling that it was something bad. Pitch it however you want, but I’m not the enemy, Max.”
“Let’s go,” Alec growled into her ears. “He’s trying to stall us.”
“Be careful,” Cy said softly. “Don’t do anything stupid.”
She let Alec push her out the door and into the tidy, orderly hallway. He shut the door on the way out. “Max,” he said. “I told you this was a bad idea. We’re wasting time. If those phone calls are any indication, White’s had Cale for going on six days and I can guarantee you, ordinaries won’t last half as long as I did. We’ve got to find out where White is if you want to save this Logan guy of yours. At this point, we have narrowed down to ‘hopefully nearby.’ And we’re not even considering the fact that we’re probably walking into a trap.”
Alec’s words were static in her ears. The task was nearly insurmountable and every moment wasted would cost Logan a little more of his precious blood. Max was on the verge of unraveling.
“I’m sorry,” a new voice said. It took Max a long moment to locate the source. It was Dee, studying her with an intense blue stare. “I didn’t know.” The was a tremor in her soft voice and Max couldn’t help but picture her as just another normal kid who’d broken something her parents loved.
“I’m sure it’s not your fault, kiddo,” Alec said, crouching down next to her. “People make mistakes. Why don’t you go find Stat and…”
“It is my fault,” Dee insisted forcefully. “I should have guessed it was wrong, but he outranks me. I’ve got to listen to him.”
“Dee,” Max said, more sharply than she intended to. “Who are you talking about?”
“Cy,” she answered, nearly inaudibly. “He brought me a picture and asked me to take the man away. He said I was helping. He said people would die if I didn’t help him.”
“You did it,” Alec said with a little disbelief. “Took him out of people’s minds? Is that even possible?”
Max glanced at Alec. “Still think Cy’s one of the good guys. Christ, Alec, she’s just a kid.”
“He said I was the only one who could do it,” Dee whispered. “He said it would help, said I could be a soldier.” She looked up at Max, eyes shining with unshed tears. “You’re mad. I’m sorry. I didn’t know it was wrong. I shouldn’t have done it. I didn’t want to disobey a direct order.”
“We’re not at Manticore anymore,” Max said, crouching over to put a hand on the girl’s shoulder. “You don’t always have to obey orders.”
“Yes, Ma’am,” she sniffed.
“If you did it,” Max said as realization hit her, “if you took the memories of this guy away, you can put it back. Make everything how it should be again.”
“That’s just the thing,” Dee said miserably. “I’ve been trying. Ever since you can the first time, I’ve been trying to undo it, but I can’t. Don’t be mad. I-I.” She hiccupped. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right, Dee,” Max said softly and she’d surprised to find that she wasn’t mad with the girl. She was a victim of circumstances, an unfortunate bystander who got caught up in a war. Just like Joshua. Just like Alec. Just like Logan. “There’s another way you can help.”
The girl pulled herself up tall, standing at attention.
“Where is he now?” Max asked gently. “Where is Logan, the guy Cy made you erase?”
Dee frowned, furrowing her brow in concentration. “You already know where he is,” she said finally, opening an eye and nodding towards Alec. “Same place you found him last time.”
“The Space Needle,” Max whispered, turning to Alec. “We need to move.”
To be concluded| 11 |
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(no subject)
2/12/06 09:19 (UTC)Great chapter, looking forward to the next one.
(no subject)
2/12/06 23:25 (UTC)(no subject)
2/12/06 17:53 (UTC)(no subject)
2/12/06 23:25 (UTC)(no subject)
2/12/06 19:55 (UTC)Yeah? Well I got some news for ya, pal. You arecrazy. A mentally defective manipulative piece of crap. But if Logan dies because of your little headgames, don't think that's gonna stop me from droppin' your sorry ass offa the Space Needle!
...
*seizes control back from inner Max muse* Ahem. Sorry about that, she got away from me for a moment.
I hope they get to the Space Needle in time to save Logan! It will be utterly devastating if they don't.
And gah, poor Dee, I just wanna hug the kid.
I'm feeling conflicted... While I eagerly await to see how you finish the story, another part of me doesn't want it to end, because it really is that good.
This instalment did resolve those last few little details I was curious about, but in the process, raised a couple more (Why yes, I do think entirely too much.)
Does this mean Dee came into contact with Dr. Sam Carr at some stage, or has she strong enough assertive psychic abilities¹ to alter the memories of everyone who knew or knew of Logan?
The canonical psy-ops we saw were generally around the same age or older than Max & Alec, so Manticore couldn't have started breeding the other psy-ops after Max & Alec were born... You could however possibly make Cy considerably older than Alec² and set the onset of his visions occurring before Alec was born?
Or alternatively, Manticore could have theoretically just used post-natal gene therapy to enhance the psychic abilities of those kids who already had a predisposition?
*contemplates* ...Yeah, that could definitely work.
(no subject)
3/12/06 00:03 (UTC)The people we saw in the show like Brain and Mia (and for that matter, Stat in my fic) existed far before psychics like Dee. Manticore, being experts in interrogation techniques had managed to make coersion specialists like Mia and Brain, from what he said on the show, was basically a human calculator: a numbers cruncher. Neither of them could be considered outright psychics.
Cy, because of some genetic fluke, gets these flashes of the future: things that DEFINITELY will happen unless someone does something specific to stop them (unlike Brain who computed probably outcomes). Manticore finds out and spend at least a year working on Cy to isolated the part of his genetics that make those flashes happen. Over time, the perfected the technique to get psychics like him and a few years down the line, you get kids like Dee.
Dee, asides for being a full-fledged psychic, was made for the purpose of performing extractions. Essentially, when Manticore decides to remove an operative from the field, she erases any memory that they were even there. (In chapter 8 Cy did the huge explanation of the how).
What Dee did was erase all memories of Logan after the shooting. However, she couldn't create new memories to replace them so everyone associated with Logan wound up with huge gaping holes in their memory. It's a bit of a reach, I know, but keep in mind this originally going to be a Supernatural fic and things on that end of the track don't tend to need this much explanation. =)
...Honestly, I like Cy. He's one of my all time favorites of my OCs. And he's got quite a lot to say (I admit, he sort of highjacked this chapter.) He's very much about the end justifying the means and from his point of view, it's Max away from White or let White's evil plan come to pass. Logan doesn't even factor into his decision making.
Glad you're still enjoying this. I hope I answered all your questions.
(no subject)
7/12/06 02:51 (UTC)*impish grin* Yeah yeah, I'm a big dork.
I know Brain kept claiming that the things he could predict were based purely on heuristic mathamatics and the study of patterns, and a lot of it probably was, but not all of it. Math and pattern observation don't allow a person, no matter how smart, to envision an outcome when there are unknown factors in play. Brain envisioned outcomes when he didn't know all the factors in play, and he'd also get flashes of future vision, when there was nothing to alert him to changed circumstances. While he might have been able to predict how the baddies were likely to react, he shouldn't have been able to envision exactly how it would play out, without having actually been in the buildings he described in detail.
So we'll have to agree to disagree about Brain being psychic.
I appreciate Cy too, he's a good character, with his own motivations. Without him, there'd be a whole lot less to the story. Incidentally, I tend to think Ames is a great character, a truly sinister bad guy. Max doesn't gotta like either of them, (and it would be kinda weird if she did, given the givens) But I appreciate them for what they are.