A solitary figure stood in the pre-dawn street. Watching. The rain had stopped for the moment. Suddenly, he felt the faint vibrations of footsteps, moving towards him under the asphalt. The manhole cover at his feet wobbled in place before grating its way onto the road. Smoke curled around his head like a halo in the still night air.

'You look like shit.'

Alec looked up. 'Thanks buddy. Friends like you, who needs enemies?'

'You say that like we're friends.'

Alec struggled for a second before lifting himself out of the sewer. Mole thought about extending his hand to help and decided against it. Nobody likes having their weaknesses brought to attention.

'Max send you?'

Mole shook his head. 'Max is sleeping off that fight you two had with the familiars.' He looked off into the distance and added nonchalantly 'Bad luck them showing up at Foggle towers like that.'

'Yeah.' Alec shook his head. 'It was. Max tell you what happened?'

Mole looked down at the ground. 'No. Emerald.' He met Alec's eyes. She thinks I believe it. Nice girl. Not too smart.'

Alec chuckled. Mole puffed thoughtfully on his cigar. They arrived, by silent consensus at Alec's dingy building. His quarters on the fourth floor were an empty lab, with a mattress pushed into the corner. Former windows were boarded up and another corner contained a gaping hole in the floor, looking into the disused offices below.

Mole sat on the only chair in the room, leaving Alec to lower himself onto the mattress, wincing as the bruising on his abdomen made itself felt. Mole watched him dispassionately.

'She got you pretty good.' He watched as Alec dug around in the bedclothes, eventually removing a bottle of whisky.

'Yeah. She did.' Alec drank deeply, not even flinching at the burn of liquor down his throat.

'You hear that speech the president made?'

'Yeah.' Alec capped the bottle and tossed it to Mole. 'I did.'

Mole unscrewed the lid and drank, though alcohol didn't do much for him at all. Even a little fortification would help.

'There's a meeting. 9 am.' He made a hissy sound that was something like a lizard snicker. 'High command only'

Alec looked at his watch. 'Great. Not even six hours sleep. Just like Manticore.'

He looked pointedly at Mole. 'I need to get some sleep.'

Mole shrugged. 'Go ahead. I got your back.'

Alec didn't want to think about Mole's newfound protective instinct so he lay down on his side. It hurt too badly so he rolled over to lie on his back. From that vantage point he could only see the cracks and bumps in his dingy ceiling. He closed his eyes.

Max scanned the map in front of her. Painstakingly noted on the map were all the bases within the continental United States. Beside the map was an annotated listing of which bases had what hardware, and how many troops. "Secret" bases were outlined in yellow.

She wondered whether Emerald had gotten any sleep at all.

Max had known the outlook wasn't great, but she hadn't known exactly how bad, until this moment. The government had been holding back, hoping to eventually recoup some of their investments. Now. Annihilation. Emerald had been trying to explain. The United States army wasn't what it used to be but an injured giant was still a giant.

Max knew now. By bringing the transgenics into the limelight, by asking them to stay in Terminal City, she had signed their death sentences.

Only 30 minutes until the meeting and then she would have to explain it. Explain that they were all going to die.

She wanted to crawl back onto her mouldy mattress and sleep. She wished OC were there, to tell her everything was going to be fine. OC did not materialise. She sank down onto a rickety chair. Logan was dead, Alec would probably never speak to her again and everybody she had hoped to save by destroying Manticore would probably be dead within the week.

No tears ran down her face and she didn't make a sound but her shoulders shook with repressed sobs.

Emerald knocked on the door. 'Blue?' She looked down the hallway in what had once been an office building. The smell was musty and she could hear a faint dripping. She knocked again, harder. No response. She tried the handle. The door swung open easily. Nobody locked things in T.C. The makeshift apartment was shadowy and sombre, the windowless design adding to the stifling effect. Emerald walked forwards.

'Blue?' she called softly. There was a door at the far end and she walked towards it, feeling a sudden fear that something had happened to Blue and the boys, that they hadn't returned from the drop last night. She remembered Blue's injured hands and wondered how hard it would have been for her to fight with them.

She paused at the door and raised her hand, knocking softly. She turned the door handle.

'Blue?'

It was lighter in the bedroom, a skylight letting in the gloomy morning, casting halfhearted light on the mattress sitting on the floor. It glowed dimly on the tangled mass of limbs and bedding, intrinsically entwined.

She cleared her throat. 'Er… Blue?'

The tangle stirred, and a head emerged. One of the boys. His sleepy eyes assessed the seemingly empty room.

'Wha…?

'Over here.' Emerald was surprised by how snappy she sounded. 'It's me. Emerald.'

He seemed to get a better grip on her presence.

'What?'

'We need you guys. For a command meeting this morning.'

'She's sleeping.' He scowled 'She was hurt last night.'

'I know.' She paused. 'But, well, she's important.'

He looked at the bed around him, and glanced back up at Emerald.

'I'll wake them up. Half an hour'

Emerald sensed that she was dismissed.

Mole watched in silence. Emerald's light brown hair caught the sun for a minute as she bowed her head over the large map. Mole had read the map and things didn't look good. He had trouble with X5 facial expressions sometimes, but judging by what he thought he could see on Max's bruised face, she had come to the same conclusion. Emerald and Max were the only other people in the room and it was 9 o'clock. All the other players were late for the game.

He had left while Alec was washing. Mole had guarded Alec's uneasy sleep as he drank his way through Alec's whisky. Emerald's attempt to lie to him bothered him more than he wanted to think about. He puffed slowly on his cigar, speculatively watching smoke swirl around the room.

The door swung open and Dix shuffled in. Mole wondered whether Joshua had been invited. Probably. Guy didn't usually have anything constructive to add in a military way, but he had a real knack for handling the X5s. And, these X5s really needed handling.

Mole glanced at his watch again. Five minutes past nine.

Alec was late.

Blue was late too, but that was only to be expected.

For somebody who couldn't use her hands, Blue was feeling pretty good. For somebody who had had hardly any sleep, Blue was feeling pretty good. In fact… Blue was feeling damn great. Her muscled felt relaxed and she was warm, flanked on either side by Lucas and Eric. She didn't need to be touching them to know that they were there. The heat from their bodies was more than enough.

Long before their relationship was sexual they had slept together, huddled in a putrid sewer, the filthy smell filling their noses. It was the warmth she remembered the most. She would have liked to stay in bed with them, listening to the rain from their mattress on the floor, half-asleep and mellow from their collective orgasm.

She felt a rush of arousal at the thought, remembering the astounding synchronicity of it, the feel of them, over, around, above, inside. In the moment, her senses were tuned solely to them, the smell of their sweat soaked skin mingling with her own smells, and other, deeper scents. Every sound, every half-groaned murmur, echoed through her core. She saw flashes of deep brown eyes and felt every flex of every muscle in contact with her skin.

It was imprinted on her body and fresh in her mind. The aching and delicious pressure. The feelings of totality, of completion. The boneless joy that came afterwards. Nothing she had ever felt had come close to perfect, until she met Eric and Lucas. The thrill of battle and the rush of combat adrenaline were nothing in comparison. And the sleep! Deep and peaceful, safe and warm. She never woke up, never had nightmares when she could feel them around her. It had taken Eric to wake her that morning, passing on the message from Emerald.

The thought brought her back to the present. The TC streets were very empty for this time of day, although she had the feeling of people hiding, people watching as they neared headquarters. Something was going down. She felt a surge of adrenaline. They had come to T.C in search of something bigger, and it looked like this might be it.

An X6 wearing what looked like a tracksuit, glanced up as they entered.

'They're on the second floor.'

Blue nodded, taking the stairs two at a time, as the boys dropped behind her, unable to fit three across in the narrow passage on the second floor. She made her way to a windowless room in the centre of the floor and paused briefly before kicking open the door.

'Am I late?' She grinned widely. The boys entered the room behind her and stood beside her as she assessed the room without even thinking. Max looking tense, bruised and, as usual, morose. Joshua waiting patiently alongside the lizard guy whose name, inexplicably, was Mole. She could never read the lizard's expressions so she didn't try. The box-like room was already filling with the smoke from his cigar. Her instincts told her that there was somebody else in the room. Her eyes told her otherwise. Emerald, she decided, looking hard and eventually seeing her, standing by the table.

That left one person.

'Where's Alec?'

Max went rigid.

'He's not here yet.'

She wondered whether or not to leave it alone, given that it was clearly a sore spot. She decided against it.

'What's the matter honey? Lover's quarrel?'

Max scowled and winced as the change in expression stirred her bruising. Emerald stiffened slightly beside her.

There were times when Max really didn't like Blue. Now was one of those times.

'We got ambushed by familiars.' The lie rolled easily off her tongue and she looked down at the table, wondering if other lies would be as easy to tell. 'Everything's going to be fine', she practiced internally and suppressed her grim smile. That was one lie she wasn't prepared to tell. The soft click of the door didn't make her look up. She knew who it was, the hairs prickling on the back of her neck as a response to his presence.

'Alec!' said Blue, and Max looked up, pretending to notice him at last. 'Max was just telling us about your near miss with the familiars'

Max soberly looked Alec in the eye. 'Go along with it' she thought, 'Go along with it.'

Alec broke the look to glance at Blue. 'Yeah. It was bad.'

'So' Blue changed the topic glibly. 'Now that everybody is here…what's up?'

'There's been a change.' Emerald stated. The federal government has authorized the use of lethal force in the interests of', she paused briefly, 'neutralizing us.'

'Right' Blue looked serious. 'So when do we attack?' She smiled broadly.

Max found her voice. 'We don't' Blue looked confused, and Emerald looked approving. She couldn't bring herself to look at Alec.

Alec saw Max glance around the room. She was edgy, sad. The bruising on her face made her look younger, and more vulnerable.

'There's too much risk' she said. 'Too many casualties. We need to try and leave. Go to ground for a while and then…'

It looked to Alec like she didn't really have a plan for what happened next. She didn't even seem to talk about escaping with any conviction. She cleared her throat. 'Emerald estimates that a full scale attack will occur within 3 days, so the evacuation would have to start soon. Like, now.' He could tell she was getting into the swing of it, feeling herself settle into her role as a leader again.

'I think we'll need to go out in small groups, asap. These groups will need to be provisioned.' She was working it through as she spoke. 'Mole… you'll need to get on to that. There's going to have to be some kind of communication between groups, at some point so…'

'Bullshit.' Blue practically growled it, and her boys were immediately on the alert, scanning the room for a threat.

Max came to an abrupt halt. 'What is?' She looked confused, and Alec could understand it. What was Blue doing?

'This.' Blue seemed to grow taller, her voice made her loathing clear. 'Running away.'

'I can't see that we have any other viable option.' Emerald had the air of somebody explaining a basic point to a very simple child.

'Shut up!' Blue turned on Emerald, raising her voice. Alec had never seen Blue in anything resembling this state. He had seen her at Manticore, when they had all been emotionless numbers and seen her at TC as 'Blue', glib and selfish. He had never seen her get angry.

'You think you know what's viable? You think you can tell us our 'options'?! Get real. You know nothing. You know less than our fearless leader here!'

She looked scathingly at Max. 'I can't believe you! Where do you get off? Telling us to run! We stayed because of you. We came because you said no more running. And now...the first sign of trouble… You make me sick.'

Max had tears welling up in her eyes. 'I just want everybody to be safe.. I just want us to be happy.'

'Newsflash Max. It doesn't matter what that battlefield accountant tells you. We will never be safe. They hate us. They fear us. They opened Pandora's box and now they want to cram us all back inside, pretend it never happened?! And we'll all hide somewhere, until the next time some point scoring politician decides to hunt us down for kicks.'

The more Alec listened to Blue, the more sense it made. Why should they be the ones hiding, and running for their lives? He could see that Max was being won over too, and Blue softened her tone slightly.

'Look, Max… I know you weren't there for a lot of it but… we fought for them. We killed for them. We were slaves. We deserve more than being made to run for our lives.'

Max nodded thoughtfully. 'What do the rest of you think?'

'It's a bad idea' Emerald's voice was flat. 'We'll all be killed.'

Alec realized he didn't have to think about it. 'I'm with Blue. We should fight.'

Mole had been uncharacteristically silent and Alec looked at him. He lit a fresh cigar and gave Emerald a long, thoughtful look that Alec didn't understand. 'We fight' he said shortly.

'They owe us.'

She knew that other residents.