"Well that explains what Mole was doing back on duty.  Let me know if Eyes Only can help at all."

She wasn't interested in battle tactics right now, not when there was obviously a bigger mystery going on right under her nose.  "So who called Alec?" she asked. 

Her stance was as casual as her voice, but on Max the look only meant trouble; she knew something was up, and she knew he knew that she knew something was up.  He could stall and try to talk his way out of it, or he could take the fast approach, tell her a half-truth and leave the rest up to Alec when it was over.

"Original Cindy."

"Oh, well, hey, that makes perfect sense," she scoffed.  "Yeah, she's chattin' him up every day; doing the girl talk thing.  She must have gone crazy when she couldn't check in."

Logan gave up subterfuge and headed straight for the point.  "Do you know where he is?"

She didn't want to admit it, but Max's feelings were a little hurt.  Logan used to look forward to spending time with her, and she'd thought since he realized they could touch if gloves were involved, things were getting better.  Apparently she'd overestimated his fondness for both latex gloves and her.

"What's the rush?  Can't you stay and talk?  Or does everyone like talking to Alec better these days?"

"Look, she has a... a situation... at Jam Pony and she needed to talk to Alec about it and..."

Max abruptly shifted into action mode, something Logan usually found more endearing than he did right now.  He loved her fighting spirit; he just didn't want to end up on the wrong side of it.

"What kind of situation at Jam Pony?  Have White's men come back?  Or are the police hassling them again?"

He waved away her suspicions, though a small part of him admitted his choice of words could have been better.  "Not that kind of situation.  Nothing to do with the transgenics as a whole, just him."

Max tapped one finger against her chin.  "Hmm.  Alec and 'a situation.'  Now there's a shock."  She sighed.  "How much is it going to cost this time?"

"It's not... is he here? Because Original Cindy was kind of at the end of her rope."

Max was starting to get worried again.  Logan was acting seriously weird in her opinion, and her antennae were already in hyper mode at the mention of Alec's name.  It seemed like trouble and Alec went together just like... well, like she used to think she and Logan did.

"Logan, what's wrong?  Why won't you tell me what's up?"

"I need to tell Alec first," he insisted.  "I mean I need to tell him and then he really should be the one to tell you because it's his business and..."

"Oh, that's not the kind of argument our Maxie likes to hear, Logan," Alec teased from the metal walkway above.  "Everything in Terminal City is supposed to be her business; didn't you get the memo?"

"Don't call me 'Maxie'," she snapped without looking up.  Alec was the source of her worries right now... mostly... so Alec could take the heat.  "Especially not if you're attaching words like 'our' or 'mine' to it.  A genetically enhanced gag reflex is not something you want to be messing with."

Alec ran lightly down the stairs, looking pleased to have once again ruffled Max's feathers.  It wasn't like it was so hard to do, he reflected silently; it was just... fun.  From what he could tell, Max got a charge out of it too.

Not so very long ago Max had fooled Logan into believing there was something romantic between she and Alec, but seeing them like this, fighting like the cats and dogs who had contributed to their DNA 'cocktail', Logan wondered why he'd ever been taken in.  They were brother and sister, and unlikely friends, but nothing more. 

And nothing less.

"So what brings you to our little corner of the world, Logan?" Alec asked when he reached the first floor.  "Air too fresh and breathable out among the ordinaries?"  He cocked his head to the side and smiled broadly as he drawled, "Come on, admit it; you missed me."

Max looked chagrined; if anyone remembered Logan's vulnerability to the air in Terminal City, it should have been the woman who loved him.

"You probably shouldn't be here," she told him quickly, concern darkening her face.  "And he wouldn't be if it wasn't for you," she spit out a minute later, turning back to glare at Alec.

Her fellow X5 looked confused, and a little wounded.  Teasing aside, he and Max had been getting along much better since the move to Terminal City, or at least so he'd thought.  Her sudden flat-out hostility was beginning to make him wonder if their new camaraderie existed more in his mind than in reality, and that bothered him.  He was actually surprised by how much it bothered him.

"I didn't call him, Max."  He pulled out his cell phone, at the moment carried more from habit than potential usefulness.  "I couldn't, remember?"

"Yeah, and that's why he's here," she snapped.  "He's picking up your messages."

Alec visibly brightened.  "Is she cute?  Please say yes, because with this whole big state of siege going on, things got kind of slow for a while.  And a man can only stand so many 'great personality' nights before he starts to go a little... squirrelly."

"Like you ever stopped talking long enough to notice anyone else's personality," Max mocked him.

Alec smirked as he leaned over to brush his knuckles back and forth along her cheekbone.  "I noticed your Type A the first day we met, sunshine."

She knocked his hand away from her face and scowled.  "Oh please, as if you were looking for anything but a mirror in that cell."

Logan looked from one to the other as confusion warred with a sudden sense of loneliness.  They'd been doing this to him more and more since they started spending so much time together running Terminal City; it was like they had their own routine worked out and there was no place for him in it. 

"Wait, is who cute?" 

"The girl who called for me," Alec explained, as though it should have been obvious.  "It was a girl, right?  You wouldn't come all the way over to Toxic Town just to tell me that Sketchy wants to knock a few back at a strip club tonight... not that I'd mind, of course, but..."

"It was Original Cindy," Logan broke in. 

"Okay, well, she is a girl," Alec conceded doubtfully.  "And she's a looker, don't get me wrong.  But she's not exactly my type, and I'm sure not hers."

"You just wish you were, pretty boy," Max jeered.

Alec raised his eyebrows and briefly examined her suggestion.  "Actually, no," he answered after due consideration.  "Having seen what you girls go through just to get ready to go out for a cup of coffee, I think I'd rather stay the way the mad scientists made me."

"Annoying?" Max asked brightly.  "Yeah, I bet there was a big ol' party in the lab the night they isolated that genome."

Logan decided to take another stab at delivering his message.  When Max and Alec started fighting, with words or fists, the best choice was to keep regrouping and repeating.  Sooner or later one of them would get frustrated enough to listen.

He hoped.

"She was delivering a message."

"Another message?"  Alec scratched his dark blond hair and frowned.  "I thought we got out of that biz when Detective Clemente blinked."

"That was packages, idiot," she smacked Alec's hand away from his head with the flat of her palm, "not messages.  No wonder you got such lousy tips."

His eyes lit up along with his smile.  "You have no idea, Maxie; no idea."

"I told you to stop calling me..."

"Look, Alec, maybe we could go somewhere and talk for a minute?" Logan suggested desperately.  "Somewhere private," he stressed, nodding slightly at Max.

Alec caught his meaning immediately, as did Max.

"Hey, I could care less what creepy little secrets Alec is keeping," she said loftily.  "I just can't figure out how he got my girl involved.  She's usually too smart for one of his cons."

Alec was a little hazy on that last point himself; he hadn't talked to Original Cindy in a few weeks, and that was just in passing when she came to see Max.  Whatever was up with her, and apparently with him, it couldn't be much if he didn't even know about it.

"Listen, we have no secrets here," he said smoothly.  "We can't – we've got too many people trained in covert ops.  You might as well just tell me what she said, and then I'll think of a way to talk myself out of the part Max want to yell at me for."

Logan ran his hand through his already disheveled hair and sighed as he gave up the fight.  "Good luck with that fast talking idea, because I don't see how you're going to manage it.  Original Cindy said there's a man at Jam Pony who needs to see you..."

"Is that all?" Alec broke in.  "Must be someone I used to do business with or..."

"Or a detective," Logan interrupted in turn.  "In fact he is a detective, and he has a little girl with him he says you were looking for."  He glanced at Max, bracing inwardly for the explosion.  "He says she's your daughter."

* * * * *

Logan had been expecting smothered, or perhaps not so smothered curses, from Max.  At the very least, he'd been expecting a yell.  He wasn't prepared for her giggling; he wasn't even sure when he'd last heard her make such a sound, if he ever had.

"Daughter?" Max repeated in disbelief, when she had gained the breath to speak.  "Is he crazy or just tripping?"  Her amusement died quickly, however, when she considered her own suggestion.  "Have you started dealing again, Alec, because if you have, so help me..."

"She's really with him?" Alec asked sharply, not even hearing Max's nervous chatter.  "They're at Jam Pony right now?"  He started towards the entrance without waiting to hear the answer.

"Alec, wait!" Max called.

He halted, but just barely.  She could see him shifting his weight restlessly from one foot to the other, poised to dart out at any moment.

"What... what's Logan talking about?  This is a joke, right?  I mean, you and a kid?  A girl kind of kid at that... it's just..." she threw up her hands, "nuts."

Alec's face bore no trace of his normal good humor, not even the kind he put on for show.  "Name me one thing about Manticore that wasn't nuts, Max."

"Manticore?  But what..."

Alec didn't have time for this, however much he felt for Max at the moment.  He understood that she must be feeling betrayed and confused and left out in the dark, along with a sizeable dose of her usual Alec-induced exasperation.  Normally he'd let her vent, at least until she started repeating herself, but today he just didn't have the time.

"Look Max, believe it or not, this is real.  And I really have to go."

"Go where?" she asked, not sure what answer she wanted, let alone what she would get.

"Jam Pony," he answered simply.  "You heard the man: I've got to get my kid."

* * * * *

"The danger, gentlemen," Ames White nodded his head belatedly at the 2 female agents in the third row "and ladies, is real.  Even though officially, it doesn't exist."  He paused for emphasis.

"Officially."

He had their attention with that one word, and he knew it.  He knew that deep down each of them relished working just the other side of the visible, live-by-the-rules-or-face-the-consequences world.  In their world the only consequences were for failure or discovery; and with his guidance, neither would be an issue.  That's what these briefings were all about.

"The transgenic problem is officially no longer a problem, at least not on the federal level.  Since the siege at Terminal City, it has been decided... officially decided... that any transgenic issues are to be solved on a local level."  He smirked, knowing he would have them all eating out of the palm of his hand with his next words.  "Since we all know what a splendid job they did resolving the hostage situation in Seattle."

White knew his agents had all been fuming since the city had announced the terms of agreement with the residents of Terminal City.  He had them all convinced that it was the local authorities who forced him to bring in an outside team instead of using his own people to end the crisis, and that had his people been used, the city would never have succumbed to the transgenics' offer of money to smooth over the situation.

"Thanks to this official policy, we now have a new unofficial problem.  The transgenics have been exposed; Joe Schmoe on the street knows there are mutants... sorry, artificially created humans... out there, and he knows how to identify them.  This has driven the transgenics into Terminal City in droves.  They can't blend in anymore, and they're trying to convince themselves they don't want to.  They want to be a community."  His voice dripped sarcasm, the closest he could come to expressing his inner rage and disgust at the situation.  "And in time, they will want to be families within the communities.  In other words, transgenic children."

He saw one or two hands shoot up in the back of the room; overachieving new agents eager to prove they'd done their homework.  They were annoying, but easily manipulated, which was the only reason he put up with them.

"And yes, before anyone feels the urge to read to me from my own reports, I am aware that the Terminal City siege actually began with the birth of a transgenic baby."

The hands in the back of the room abruptly dropped out of sight. 

"That baby, according to latest intelligence, displays no barcode, and little or no inherited X-series characteristics.  In other words, we got lucky.  But people," he leaned forward on the podium and dropped his voice as though about to confide a secret, "luck runs out."

He stood up straight again and glanced all around the room before he continued.  "We know for a fact that one transgenic produced a partially transgenic child after pairing with a human, someone just like you and me.  But now that the transgenics are pulling out of general society, the chance of that scenario happening again are slim.  Add in the fact that the traits would only be coming from one side of the pair, and certain characteristics are sex-linked... the odds continue to go down.  No, the real danger today comes from an X-series pairing with another X-series.  Sources say they were already experimenting with the idea when the Seattle facility burned, but they weren't far enough along to calculate a success ratio."

White gripped the podium tightly, his whole frame radiating the importance of his message.  "Ladies and gentlemen, the Seattle facility burned down 10 months ago.  40 weeks.  Any pregnancies that resulted from the Manticore breeding program are about to bear fruit, so to speak.  And a whole new generation of transgenics is about to be unleashed on the unsuspecting world.  We don't know what they will be capable of; we don't know if they will bear any identifying marks such as a barcode.  All we know is that we are in big trouble."

"Unofficially."

* * * * *

The explosion Logan had prepared himself for did come, but Max managed to hold herself together until they were in the car following Alec's motorcycle across town to Jam Pony.  Alone in the car, Logan noted ruefully.  Alone in the suddenly very small car, where he had no place to hide and lucky Alec was nowhere within range of the ire he had provoked.

"He has to get his kid," she repeated in amazement, for at least the fourth time.  "Like I'm supposed to let him just walk out with a line like that and not say anything."

"He did just walk out," Logan pointed out, knowing he would regret keeping her anger fueled yet somehow unable to help himself.

"You're darn right he did," she agreed indignantly.  "Just walked out like it was the most obvious thing in the world that he has this kid... a daughter at that."  She pressed one flattened hand to her chest and gave Logan a wide-eyed glance.  "I almost can't say it; it's just too... too weird.  And I have seen some weirdness in my life," she asserted strongly, as though Logan called her experience into question.

"I know you have," he assured her.  "Between Joshua and Mole and Dix and the Gossamer and..."

"And the mermaid, don't forget her," Max added with an emphatic wave of her hand.  "The point is I know weird; I even live with weird..."

"Suddenly glad I have my own place," Logan muttered under his breath.

"But this is way, way weird," she continued, not paying attention to Logan's asides.  "I mean how could he not tell me something like this?  How could Alec, of all people, keep this a secret?  He can't keep anything a secret; he's yapping like 25 hours a day.  How could he talk that much and not tell me?"

Logan shot her a worried look, suddenly wondering if his earlier estimation of her relationship with Alec was wrong after all.  He'd thought they'd grown closer since the siege; she'd finally admitted there was nothing between she and Alec except a strange sort of friendship, and the time he had spent with the two of them had seemed to back that up.  Now he was forced to wonder if the lack of a romantic relationship was due just to Alec's indifference, not a mutual disinclination.

"Max," he said hesitantly, "why does this bother you so much?  I mean I thought it would because you'd think he'd been irresponsible..."

"Again!" she fumed.

"Yeah, that."  Logan conceded that point without argument; there really was none he could offer.  "But it seems to me like you're angrier that he didn't tell you what he did rather than that he did it.  Or am I wrong?"

She stared at him across the car seat, trying to figure out why he was so freaked by her being freaked.

"Well of course I'm mad that he was irresponsible," she said finally.  "But he's Alec; it's almost a given.  Or it was," she grudgingly allowed in the interest of fairness.  "But if this kid is the lack of surprise that she seems to be to him, we're talking old Alec behavior here anyway."

"So it's just that he didn't tell you, tell you specifically," he stressed, "that you're angry about?"

She frowned as an unlikely suspicion tickled at the back of her mind.  Or maybe it wasn't so unlikely, she admitted silently, given what she'd tried to do just a few short months ago.

"Logan" she asked slowly, "are you jealous?"

He forced a sharp laugh, though he didn't see much humor in the situation.  "Jealous?  Of Alec?  You mean just because you spent so much time trying to convince me that you two were an item, and now that you say it was all a well-meaning scam, you're acting all hurt because he didn't confide in you?  Why would that make me jealous?"

She leaned over and rested her gloved hand on the sleeve of his leather coat, well above his exposed hand on the steering wheel.

"Logan, of course I'm hurt he didn't tell me," she said softly.  "I thought I was getting through to him... I thought we all were.  He was all fast talk when he first crashed his way into my life; he spent so much time jabbering it was hard to notice he never actually said anything.  Then when that girl died..."

"Rachel Berrisford," Logan said with a nod.

"Right."  Max's own nod was crisp, almost as much as her tone became.  "When she died he shut down so tight I didn't think he'd ever let anyone in again.  But then he and Joshua started to connect and I thought... I thought I did too.  I mean he opened up his own little transgenic Underground Railroad at Jam Pony, and it seemed like maybe there was hope for him.  Like maybe he finally realized he was one of us, not just Alec against the world.  And then this."

A stubborn part of Logan fought against really hearing her words, but his innate sense of fairness, not to mention his love for her, kept getting in the way.

"Max, we don't know how old this girl is, but he did mention Manticore so I'm guessing she isn't a recent arrival.  And you're right – he was shut down for a long time, and when he finally started trusting you... imagine how hard it would be for you to say, 'Oh by the way, I also have a daughter I never told you about'?"

She eyed him through narrowed eyes, reminding him forcefully of her feline DNA.  "You don't, do you?"

"Don't what?"

"Have a daughter you..."

"Never told you about?" he finished for her.  "Not unless no one told me either."

He was smiling when he answered her, but that only made her frown settle deeper.

"That wasn't as comforting as it should have been," she grumbled.

"Max."

"Oh all right!"  She scowled and crossed her arms over her chest.  "Alec must have had his reasons, and as for you... well, I guess we'll just have to wait and see."

* * * * *

On an ordinary day Alec would have had no trouble beating Logan to Jam Pony with time to spare, especially since he had a head start.  But this was no ordinary day, not by a long shot, and although his speed was more than adequate, his distraction cost him serious time; he arrived at the garage only a minute or two ahead of his well-meaning pursuers.

He didn't notice his former coworkers starting to hail him as he walked in the door, any more than he noticed when their arms fell to their sides and their voices died off at the recollection of his last day of work.  All his attention was focused on the group in the center of the garage.

Reagan Ronald, better known to his under-impressed and overworked employees as 'Normal,' was sitting cross-legged on the floor, while an amused Sketchy, and a hyped-up Original Cindy stood watch on either side.  The detective Alec had hired, and paid many times over, was facing them, and facing Alec.  But no one noticed Alec, just as he didn't see them; everyone was intent on the tiny stranger in the room.

She was sixteen months old now, or maybe seventeen; Alec had never been told her exact date of birth.  Her hair was still the dark gold that he remembered, just a shade lighter than his own, and her eyes seemed to have settled from their initial infant blue to a mossy green.  She had been toddling from one adult to another when he walked in, chattering away to the amusement and amazement of all assembled.  But she seemed to sense Alec's presence even before she saw him; she stopped talking and turned from Sketchy to fix him in her bright-eyed gaze.

"Hey man, check it out."  Sketchy gestured to the little girl with a broad grin on his thin face.  "She talks and everything."

Alec forced himself to stop looking at her, dragging his eyes away to confront the detective.

"I'm sorry I had to bring her here," the man quickly apologized.  "I've been trying to get you on your cell, but no dice.  And you said if I ever needed to find you, this was the place to start, with that girl Max you told me about."

"No, it's fine."  Alec brushed away the detective's explanation as just so much noise.  "But are you sure..." he paused to clear his unexpectedly tight throat, "it's her?"

The detective nodded as he pulled a small piece of paper out of his pocket and waved it.  "Barcode checks out.  See for yourself."

Alec didn't bother to take the proffered paper; he didn't need it.  He had memorized her bar code the first and only time he had seen it, preparing for a day just like this one.  Slowly he walked over to the child and crouched down in front of her.  With one shaking hand he lifted the golden curls at her neck and leaned around to see what lay beneath them. 

And suddenly he was back almost a year in time, to the night he'd first seen this mark.

* * * * *

// He crept into the nursery, shooting repeated glances over his shoulder to check for guards.  His intelligence had indicated that midnight was the crucial shift change – the one time during the day when both the guards and the nursing staff changed at the same time.  But after all that had happened the last time he disobeyed orders, he wasn't going to take any chances.

Not take any chances: that was a laugh.  He knew he was taking a huge one just wanting to be here, let alone following through on the idea.  He wasn't even sure why he was doing it, but here he was and here, somewhere, so was she.

Manticore was essentially a military installation, so even the nursery was arranged more like a barracks.  Crib after crib was lined up against the far wall, below a bank of small windows; he moved silently from one to the next, searching for the designation ' X5' among the infant X7's and 8's.  After three tries he finally caught a break.

He'd thought she would be sleeping; it was midnight after all.  But instead it almost seemed like she was waiting for him.  She was sitting up quietly in her crib, tiny fingers pulling at the fuzz on her blanket, wisps of dark blonde hair framing a grave little face.

Then she saw him and she smiled.  And he fell in love for the second time in his life.

She was beautiful.  And she was his.  His daughter, no matter how strange the idea was to wrap his mind around.  Until this moment, he had never had anything to truly call his own; even he was technically considered government property.  Renfro would probably say this little girl was too, but he couldn't make himself see it that way.  She belonged to him and he would find a way to keep her safe.

He bent over the crib and slipped his hands around her tiny body, lifting her awkwardly to his shoulder.  He'd never held a baby before; he'd barely even seen them in the course of his work for Manticore, and for the first time he realized what a blessing that was.  For all the unconscionable things he had done for his masters, he had never had to hurt one so small and defenseless.

She must not have felt comfortable with the hold he had on her; she gripped his shirt tightly between her little fingers and pulled herself up to burrow into his neck.  He couldn't let himself laugh for fear of attracting the guards or the nurses, but he didn't have to hold back his grin.  She was strong, and she was smart too; no doubt about, she was his.

"Hey, monkey," he whispered, "bet you never expected to see me, did ya?  I'm your," he paused over the sheer enormity of it, "I'm your daddy." //

* * * * *

Alec pulled himself back from the past with reluctance.  A part of him wanted to pretend that all the intervening time had never happened; then he could go back and do things over.  Do them right.  But for all the advanced technology at their disposal, Manticore had never experimented with time-traveling transgenics.  Now was all he had. 

He shifted his weight back onto his heels, allowing him to look her in the eye and smile gently.  Without thinking, his hand slipped around to cup her cheek. 

"Hey, monkey," he said softly, "bet you don't remember me."

Alec hadn't expected an answer, at least not the right one, but he got it anyway.

"You Daddy," she said seriously.  A moment later a quick, partially toothless grin flashed across her little face; combined with her surprising answer it almost took Alec's breath away.

"Did you tell her?" he asked the detective.

"She told me," the man answered with a shake of his head.  "Damnedest thing I've ever seen.  Kids that age aren't supposed to talk, you know, at least not like that.  But it's a good thing she did or I never would have gotten her out of that hospital."

"Hospital?"  Alec's gaze swept back to the little girl as he anxiously looked her up and down for signs of an injury.  "Why was she in a hospital?"

"Observation.  She was in a foundling home that burned to the ground last night.  Firefighter found her wandering around and brought her in."

"Burned?" Max asked sharply as she strode into the garage.  "Did they find out what happened?"

Normal waved a disparaging hand.  "Nurse on a cigarette break; I can almost guarantee it.  Those things are death on a stick, little lady."

"Nah, witnesses said it musta been deliberate."  The detective looked at Alec and frowned.  "Those guys with the snake brands you told me about... one of them was spotted running away from the building just after the fire started.  Heard it on a police radio and decided to check it out just in case; that's how I happened across the little girl."

"Snake brands?  You think White knows about..."

"Max," Alec snapped without looking at her, "not now."  He gestured for the detective to continue.

"So when I was waving those papers you gave me around trying to convince the nurse to let me take her, the little one here took sight of your picture on the copy of your license and said you were her daddy.  Said she wanted to go home, now."  He chuckled.  "Not sure if the nurse believed her or she was just so surprised she let us go before she thought about it."

"Mm mm mm."  Original Cindy shook her head in amazement.  "Child ain't hardly old enough to eat jam and already she be talking her way out of one.  Now that is for sure what they call heredity."

"Yeah, she's a chip off the old block, all right," Normal agreed with relish.  He clapped Alec on the back as he added, "She's gonna be a beauty too, my friend; I can tell.  Better start loading up that shotgun now."  Suddenly he recalled the last time Alec and his friends had been at Jam Pony and his smile faltered.  "On second thought..."

"She is beautiful, Alec," Logan said softly.

And she was; Alec couldn't argue that point even if he'd still been able to form full sentences.  Instead he tentatively reached out and put his hands on either side of his daughter's waist.  When she didn't resist, he pulled her closer and stood up, gingerly holding her in his arms as though afraid she would either break or break down.

She did neither.  She wound her arms around his neck and burrowed into his shoulder, just as she had the first time he held her.  Alec felt something tighten in his chest at the simple gesture of affection and trust.  It was a gift he'd only received from one other person, now forever lost to him, and he promised again that this experience would not end like that one had.  He would protect her and give her the life that she deserved, no matter what the cost.  He would be brave for her, as he had not been in the past, and he would never, ever let her down.

He would not screw this up, not again.

* * * * *

Alec had wanted to make a quick getaway, but Logan pointed out a flaw in his plan in the shape of his beloved motorcycle.  It was a great piece of machinery, but child-safe it was not.  So instead he had to trust it to Max, and return to Terminal City in what he liked to call the Yawn Mobile.  There was still no car seat available, but it beat telling a toddler to close her eyes and hang on.

Logan was quiet at first, sneaking peeks at Alec and the little girl out of the corner of his eye when he thought the X5 wasn't watching.  After the third such stolen glance however, it became apparent his interest had not gone unnoticed.

"Her name's not Medusa, Logan," Alec drawled.  "You can actually look at her without turning to stone.  Just..." he waved a hand at the windshield, "don't look for too long, you know?  Eyes on the road, Eyes Only."

"So what is her name?" Logan asked quietly.

The child turned her head towards Logan and smiled politely.  "49614."

"Excuse me?"  Logan had assumed that Alec would answer the question, and he didn't find the X5's attempt at a childish treble particularly amusing.  When he realized the answer had actually come from the child, he was embarrassed as well as unpleasantly surprised.  "You never gave her a real name?"

Alec looked down at the little girl sitting docilely on his lap.  He knew the guy didn't mean it, but once again all it took was a few quick words from Logan to make him feel like a first-class jerk.

"What good would it have done?" he countered, swallowing his irrational anger that the same people who labeled him with a number in place of a name had done it to his kid as well.  "They were going to call her what they wanted, no matter what I said."

"You're right, of course."  Logan flushed a dull red.  Even if Alec had called her something in the back of his mind, it was doubtful that he would be the first person the transgenic would share it with.  "I'm just... surprised.  It seems, well, it seems a little long.  Don't the rest of you usually go by a 3-digit... nickname."

"She wasn't assigned a number; it just came out of the combined DNA coding.  Genetics was never my specialty," he shrugged, "but I guess in a way it makes sense.  Her, well, her mother's number was 416."  Alec frowned.  "I think."

Logan's attention quickly shifted back to the road.  "Nice, Alec, very nice.  Be sure to say it just that way in front of Max.  After that... I'd try ducking."

"Hey, I'm sorry," the X5 protested.  "I only met her the one time, and even then I didn't see her face until after we..." he glanced down at his daughter, curled up like a cherub in his lap, "you know."

Logan tried to keep the distaste from showing on his face, but it was a struggle.  "Alec, maybe we should save this part for later," he suggested.  "Or, and here's a real possibility, never."

"Get your mind out of the gutter, Logan; it's not what you think."  Alec waved his hand as though to sweep the air clean of any tawdry implications.  "It was just the drugs.  Mostly the drugs," he qualified after a momentary pause to reevaluate.

"Strangely enough, that doesn't make it sound much better."

"I was a little... let's just say fuzzy... at the time."  He wished he knew why he felt the urge to explain himself to Logan, of all people; it wasn't like he cared what the guy thought of him.  "Manticore felt I needed some... retraining after one of my missions went seriously sideways.  And their idea of behavior modification involved a little more than cheese and buzzers." 

"Behavior modification?" Logan asked uneasily.  Having talked with some of Max's brothers and sisters over the past 2 years, he was pretty sure he knew where the transgenic was going with this; he just hadn't known it had happened to Alec.

"They called it re-indoctrination, but I like to think of it as freshening the genetic cocktail."  Pictures started flashing at the edges of Alec's memory; places and events he had no wish to revisit.  "Blend some super-size hallucinogens with a little brainwashing, top it off with some time on the rocks with the 'nomalies and stir until shaken."

He broke off and smiled down at the sleepy child in his lap, but there was more than a trace of bitterness in the hazel eyes that watched her struggle against the soothing rhythm of the moving car. 

"I was livin' large, you know?" he finished quietly.  "I mean it was a good day if I remembered my own number, let alone anyone else's."

Logan was silent, processing what Alec had said and wondering what he hadn't.  The X5 normally hid so much behind a smiling face and busy chatter; this much sharing had to mean what was still under wraps was much worse than usual.

"Does Max know?" he finally asked.

It took Alec a moment to pull himself back from the past and realize what Logan was referring to.  "About the time I spent in Psi Ops, or how I spent it?"

"Both."

"She only knows about the first time."  He saw the question forming in Logan's eyes and answered it before it was born.  "I was there for 'evaluation' as a kid because my twin Ben was one of her over the wall gang."

"Which one was... oh wait," Logan interrupted himself as the memory resurfaced.  "Now I, uh, remember Ben."

"Must have been from hearsay instead of personal experience, since you still seem to have all your teeth.  Not to mention a pulse."  Alec quirked a small smile at his sibling's psychotic tendencies and then continued, "Anyway, she knows I was there then, but not later.  I figured it might make me look bad.  You know... crazy."  He waved his finger in a circle next to his ear and shrugged.  "Something like that."

"I'm..." Logan flailed about for an adequate word, but could only come up with, "sorry." 

"Anyhow, I don't even... I mean I can't make myself see what she... 416... really looked like."  Alec pressed his knuckle hard against his forehead and rubbed, trying to force the memory to take shape.  "She was part of the 'treatment'; part of Psi Ops.  Like Mia."

Logan didn't want to smile when Mia's name came up, but he couldn't help it.  The bubbly transgenic had caused a lot of problems for all of them a few months ago, but she'd had such good intentions it was hard to stay mad at her.  There was also the possibility that she had rearranged the parts of their memories that would give them reason to be mad... but Logan preferred not to examine that idea too closely.

"If she was like Mia, I can see a memory problem happening very easily." 

"Nah, she wasn't really much like Mia.  I mean Mia's specialty was tele-coercion, and making people forget she was ever tiptoeing through their brain cells.  But 416 could make people see her, literally see her, as someone else."  Alec's hand fell away from his face, leaving him feeling oddly exposed.  Or maybe it was just the conversation that made him feel like he'd gone to work wearing nothing but his barcode.  "So even though they remembered her, no two people remembered her the same way."

"Sounds useful for intelligence gathering – the kind of disguise that never falls off or falls apart.  And you carry it with you everywhere."

"Exactly."  Alec looked down at the golden head resting against his chest and wished with all his heart that he could see some trace of a resemblance between child and mother.  But the memory just wasn't there.  "I don't remember what she looked like because to me she was someone else."

Logan risked a sidelong glance, despite the increase in foot traffic as they neared Terminal City.  "Someone you cared about?"

"You could say that," Alex answered brusquely. 

He was pretty sure that Max had told Logan what she knew, and what she'd imagined, about his relationship with Rachel Berrisford.  The girl was simply incapable of keeping a secret, especially from her boyfriend.  Logan had never called him on it, though; never asked any questions or made any buddy-buddy overtures because of it, and for that Alec was grateful.  Given the choice, he would prefer to maintain the status quo on that score.

"Did she... the mother, I mean... did she know how you saw her?"

Alec shifted his blank gaze to the side window, staring unseeingly at the city streets flashing past.  "I was supposed to see her as every girl I'd ever thought twice about; that was the whole plan.  But all I saw was... doesn't matter."  He cleared his throat and forced himself to turn back to Logan.  "She said she'd never tell, so I'm guessing she knew.  She must have kept her word, though, because they put me back in the field a couple of days later.  I didn't come back to that Manticore base for over a year."

"And by then you were a father."

"Yeah."  Alec laughed sharply.  "Or as Renfro put it, I screwed up but since she was born with a barcode," without thinking Alec's fingers brushed the back of his daughter's neck, "they were going to let it slide this time.  She had potential, even if mine was in doubt."

Logan had heard Max's stories of Renfro, and shared her antipathy for the former Manticore director.  He'd rarely heard Alec complain, however, or even make mention of his time there unless someone forced the issue.  For all that Alec was saying now, Logan was willing to bet there was a myriad of conflicting emotions and memories rumbling just beneath the X5's quiet surface that would never see the light of day.

"Ah, Renfro was a generous woman, wasn't she?"  Logan felt like an idiot, not for the first time that day, but he just didn't know what to say.  "I'm sure the lack of celebratory cigars was just an oversight.  A casualty of the gender gap, perhaps."

"Yeah, she was a real princess all right," Alec muttered.  "I think telling me was the last part of the test, because she sure didn't tell anyone else, not even Lydecker."

"Is that when you first saw her?"  Logan nodded at the child in Alec's lap.  "When you talked to Renfro?"

Alec felt a dull flush spreading its way across his face.  In retrospect his clandestine visit seemed a shade melodramatic, especially to be discussing with another guy.

"No, I, uh, snuck in to visit her one night," he explained awkwardly.  "They wouldn't have let me... they're not real up with the nuclear family at Manticore.  You understand.  But I wanted to see... and so I slipped in during a shift change."

Logan hadn't wasted much of the past year feeling sorry for Alec; the transgenic seemed like one of those undentable cars, or a ball that always popped back into shape after you squashed it.  No matter what happened, no matter how serious, Alec could always snap back, and he usually started Max snapping too.

But now, and most unwillingly, Logan's mind painted him a picture to flesh out Alec's story, and he felt a tug of sympathy for that young man of the past who had found himself pushed from one uncontrollable situation to the next.  Apparently Alec had learned to start pushing back, and at some of the most unexpected times.

"Obviously she saw you that night as well," he mused.  "Although... no offense... I don't understand why she would still remember.  You must have seen her more than that."

He hadn't intended it as a question, but Alec answered anyway. 

"It wasn't an easy place to get into, and I really, really didn't want to get on Renfro's bad side."  He didn't mention what she would have done to him and the child if she'd found out.  If Logan couldn't work it out for himself by now he didn't deserve to know.  "Besides, it wasn't too long after that Max and her buddies took out the DNA lab and Renfro had her moved to another facility.  I didn't know where she was."

He was trying to sound matter-of-fact, guy-to-guy, but Logan heard something raw beneath his light tones.  He wondered if Alec had known for sure his daughter survived the destruction of Manticore, or if he'd only hoped.

"So you've been looking for her since Manticore went down?"

Much to his surprise, Alec heard approval in Logan's voice, but he shrugged it off.  He hadn't done anything special, and what he had done had taken way too long.

"Well, not me personally.  Figured I'd set off too many flares that way.  But if you're willing to lay out enough cold hard cash you can find people who'll look for the needle after the haystack's gone into the cow and out the other side."  Without conscious thought, his arms tightened around the sleeping child in his lap.  "Once I realized that the government had gotten in on the trannie-killing fun, I found the money and they found her.  Eventually."

Another puzzle was marked as solved in Logan's brain; in odd moments he'd often found himself wondering how Alec spent the money he seemed to be gathering hand over fist.  Between the con jobs, the pool hustling, his brief but lucrative career as a fighter, and the cat burglary that Logan was fairly sure hadn't ended when Alec told Max it did, the X5 should have been rolling in money.  Yet the only things he ever spent it on were his bike, strippers and scotch.  And surely even Alec must have limits when it came to scotch.

"But wait, if you only saw her that one time... how old was she?"

And again with the slam that wasn't supposed to be one.  Alec figured it was time he just gave it up; he was never going one of the Logan Cale's of the world.  His first impulse usually wasn't to do 'the right thing;' he thought the world owed him a little something in return if he was going to risk his ass to save it.  And he didn't know his own kid's birthday.

"Three months, maybe," he answered reluctantly.  "I don't know exactly when she was born.  Heck, I don't know when I was born.  But I can count to 10."

As often as Logan had seen Max, Alec and the other transgenics in action, their genetically enhanced abilities never failed to impress him.  "Three months?  She's got some memory."

Alec's blush deepened as he experienced the new sensation of parental pride.  "I guess she does."

"Must take after her mother.  Your memory's only good when it comes to money."

Logan had only intended to tease Alec, the way he had often joked with friends about the supposedly extraordinary exploits of their respective children.  But the joke fell flat when Alec was once again reminded of his child's mother, and the bitter circumstances leading to their pairing.

"Maybe she does take after her mother," the transgenic answered quietly.  "I wouldn't know.  Or don't you remember that?"

Logan cleared his throat and tried to think of a graceful out.  Unfortunately time was running short before they reached Terminal City and there were still a few things he needed to know.  Or rather, things Max needed to know but someone less volatile than she needed to ask.

"Speaking of her mother, do you know where she is now?  Can we expect a visit from her too?"

Alec opened his mouth to answer, but this time he paused to consider his words before committing himself.  He didn't know if the child knew the word 'dead,' or what it meant, but he didn't want to take any chances of upsetting her.  She'd been through enough already.

"She was a soldier first, last and always," he said carefully.  "So no, we won't be seeing her anywhere outside of a séance."

"Oh.  I'm sorry."

"Me too.  I guess."

"So it's just you and..."  Logan paused and gritted his teeth.  He was not going to call a small child by a number, even if that was what she was used to.  It was inhuman.  "You're going to have to give her a name, Alec."

Alec wouldn't look at him, and he couldn't look at her.  Instead he stared straight out the front windshield as he answered, "No, I don't."

"We can't keep calling her by a number," Logan protested.

"I know."

"So you're going to let her choose her own name?"  Logan was getting more confused by the minute.  He had a feeling Alec was stonewalling, but he didn't know why.  "Isn't she a little young for that?"

Alec steeled himself to meet Logan's curious blue eyes.  "Naming is something a parent should do," he said carefully. 

"But you're her father.  Like it or not, you're..."

"Not somebody who should be raising a kid."   Before the stunned Logan could think of any response, Alec quietly added, "But maybe with your help I can find someone else who can swing it."

* * * * *

Max paced anxiously, quickly covering the width of the old factory and back again as she tried to work off the nervous energy produced by all this unfamiliar waiting.  She'd known she would get back to Terminal City before Alec and Logan – Logan wasn't exactly noted for his high-speed driving unless the cops were riding up his tailpipe.  But having the little stranger in the car was obviously making him drive like somebody's grandmother because he should have been back at least... she checked her watch... 8 minutes ago.

"Max wearing new shoes?" a deep voice rumbled quietly behind her.  "Must break feet in?"

She spun on the heel of her nowhere near new boot and reluctantly smiled at the man behind her.

"No new shoes, Joshua; just the same old Alec."

He cocked his head to the side, his brow furrowing with concern.  Cat DNA aside, Max had been like a sister to Joshua from the moment they met, babying him half the time and looking to lean on him the other half.  He loved her, just like he had loved his brother Isaac.  But Alec was his friend; the first one he'd ever had among the 'upstairs people.'  In some ways that made them closer than brothers.  And now it seemed his friend was in trouble, at least with Max.

"Alec do something bad, make Max angry?" he asked worriedly.

"Not angry exactly," she hedged.  Actually 'angry' pretty much summed it up, but Logan had made her feel funny about admitting it.  "It's just..." she shrugged helplessly, "I thought I could finally trust him.  I mean I know he's still pretty much Mr. Unreliable, but I thought he was straight up, at least with me."

Joshua reached out and gently tugged on a lock of Max's long dark hair, hoping to tease her out of her dark mood now that he was reassured it was nothing out of the ordinary.  "Alec have secret," he corrected himself.  "Make Max angry."

"Doesn't it make you mad?" she asked, staring up at him plaintively.  "I mean you guys seem tight, but I don't think he told anyone this."

"Tell Joshua what?"

She hesitated, debating whether or not she should let Alec be the one to tell him.  It was, after all, his big news.  But as soon as he hit Terminal City with a toddler in tow the cat DNA would be out of the bag; maybe it would be better to prepare Joshua beforehand.

"He has a kid; a little girl."  She threw her hands up in the air.  "She's like a year-and-a-half old or something, and he never even told me she existed.  Did he tell you?"

"Alec have little girl?  Alec father?"  Joshua wrestled with the idea for a minute and then smiled broadly.  As hard as it seemed to be for Max to picture Alec as a father, to Joshua it wasn't so far fetched.

"So you didn't know either."  Max scuffed the floor with the toe of her boot, watching the rising dust beneath it with a sour expression.  "I'm not sure if that makes me feel better or worse."

Joshua slid a consoling arm around her slender shoulders and squeezed her tight against him.  "Alec have many secrets, many surprises," he rumbled.  "So many surprises Joshua not surprised anymore."

"I suppose that's one way to look at it," she grumbled.  "But I like my way better – he lied to me.  To all of us."

Joshua ached for the hurt he heard in his Little Fella's voice, and he struggled to find a way to ease it.  "Joshua... have brother Isaac when he was small.  Max have litter of brothers and sisters."

She couldn't help the small smile that tugged at her lips over Joshua's description of her chosen family.

"Alec have... Alec," he continued, with an expressive shrug of his broad shoulders.  "Alec trust Alec."

"But he's not alone now," she insisted.  Joshua's argument was beginning to make sense, but she still wanted to be mad at Alec when he got back to Terminal City; he owed her that much.  "I've saved his ass enough for him to realize that.  At least he should have."

"Like Joshua tell Max about Isaac?" he asked gently.  He didn't want to reopen old wounds, his or hers, but he needed her to understand.  More importantly, Alec was going to need her to understand.  "Joshua protect Isaac, even from Little Fella.  Isaac need help more than Max need to know Isaac need help."

Max opened her mouth to protest, but she was forestalled by the chirping of her cell phone.  She pulled it out of her pocket and stared at it in surprise for a moment before she flipped it open.

"Go for Max," she said crisply.

* * * * *

Although much of the media coverage has dissipated in the weeks since the siege at Terminal City ended, there were always at least one or two tabloid journalists hanging around the gates in the hopes of an interview with, or about, the transgenics.  Alec's flight on his motorcycle, followed quickly by Max and Logan in Logan's car, had not gone unnoticed by the day's stringers.  By the time Logan's car approached the south gate for the second time that day, a small crowd had gathered and the cameramen were setting up lights.

"I was afraid of this," Logan said grimly.  "Every move Max makes these days is news.  They were bound to be interested when she went storming out after you."

Alec glanced down at his daughter, and then out at the flashing lights that awaited them.  "I was kind of hoping to hold off on her television debut until she could keep from drooling on the camera.  It kind of gives the wrong impression of transgenics." 

Logan wrenched the steering wheel to the right and brought the car to a quick stop in a small alley.  "What do you want to do?  We can try to storm our way past, and hope they don't see her, but there's no guarantee that will work."

"I'd feel better if she was somewhere White can't get to her," Alec confided reluctantly.  "Terminal City has those really handy biotoxins in the air going for it, even if it is a little crowded around the edges right now."

"We could wait," Logan suggested.  "Go over to Joshua's house until dark.  They might get bored by then if nothing's going on."

It might also give he and Max a chance to sound Alec out on this adoption idea and see if the transgenic really knew what he was saying.  Alec might have the right idea, but then again he might just be scared, as anyone else would be.  Before Logan helped him make any irrevocable decisions, he had to know Alec was sure.

"And by Joshua's house you mean Sandeman's old house... where Ames White might have lived when he was as tall as she is now."

"I hadn't thought of it that way."  Logan grimaced, as much at the unpleasantness of the idea as the fact that Alec had thought of it first.  The X5's normally relaxed attitude tended to blind most people, not just Logan, to his intelligence, sometimes to their great cost.

"Still," Alec sighed, "he never did find the big guy when he was living there, so maybe that's the best choice after all.  But Max is going to pissed that we bailed on her," he warned Logan.

"If she hasn't made it too far inside yet..." Logan quickly dug into his pocket for his cell phone and hit the first button on his speed dial.  "Come on, come on," he muttered.  "Ah, wait... Max?  It's Logan."

"And chopped liver," Alec called out in the direction of the phone.  "Don't forget me."

"Yeah, same old same old," Logan agreed with her a moment later.  "Hey, we're going to hide from the reporters at the gate until after dark... I said 'hide," he repeated a minute later.  "At Joshua's.  Why don't you come over?"

"Don't let them follow you!"  This time Alec was all business.

Logan clicked the phone off and slipped it back into his pocket.  "The line went dead," he explained.  "Must be the jamming.  But she got the gist of it, so I think we're off the hook."

"You mean you are," Alec grimly corrected him.  "My neck hasn't even begun to stretch yet."

* * * * *

"Sir, we just had a report from one of our operatives.  Stage 2 has begun."

Ames White looked up at his underling standing in the doorway, searching for signs that Otto might be shining him on in the name of job, or personal, security.  Seeing nothing but the usual nervous sincerity, White pushed the pile of boring, unnecessary and apparently never-ending paperwork off to the side of his desk. 

"You're sure?  494 has the girl right now?"

"Yes sir."  Otto took a step inside the office and closed the door behind him, but he made no attempt to encroach further on White's territory.  "He picked her up at that messenger place about 30 minutes ago.  But he, uh," here was where things got a bit less encouraging, "he didn't take her back to Terminal City.  Sir."

White stood up quickly, and Otto had to force himself not to back up.  His boss had undergone some changes over the past few months, and what once had been a normal desire to be a good agent has transformed into a grim determination to do his job at all costs, even if the cost was his job.

Or someone else's life; that one didn't seem to be causing too many worry lines either, if Otto was any judge.

"Is the implant in place?" White asked urgently. 

"Yes sir," Otto answered in relief.  This time he did approach the desk, going to the far side and typing a few commands on White's keyboard.  A map appeared, the grids indicating city streets, and on one of the lines there was a blinking red light.

"She's right there, sir."  Otto pointed, unnecessarily in White's opinion, to the blinking light.  Then he typed in another command and a small box popped up on the bottom of the screen.  "Here's the address.  It's in a rundown section of town not far from Terminal City.  I guess they're going to lay low there for a little while before they head in to base camp."

White looked at the address and then did a doubletake.  It figured; it really did.  They were going to his father's old house, the one he bought when he left the fellowship.  White had, of course, never lived there; he hadn't even seen his father after the Conclave sanctioned him for saving CJ from the initiation.  But he knew about the house anyway, as he knew every move his father had made until he left Manticore.  Somehow the old man managed to drop off the radar then, but seeing that 494 was seeking refuge there made him wonder if this was one more thing he needed to question his transgenic prey about.

"Sir?  Is something wrong?"

Otto had noticed White's absorption, but fortunately he had no idea of the source.  Fortunately for White, and more so for Otto.

"Wrong?"  White brought himself back to the present with difficulty.  "No, Otto; nothing's wrong.  So he's got the child.  Good, well then we'll just let them settle in for a few days before we begin Stage 3."

"Yes sir."  Otto shifted his weight uncomfortably from one foot to the other.  "About Stage 3, sir..."

White's penetrating gaze switched from the computer screen to his nervous assistant.  "What about it?"

"Well... what is it?  Sir."  Otto considered pausing to give his boss a chance to answer, but the look in White's eyes told him he'd last longer if he made the question sound a little better first.  "If we're beginning it in a few days, it might be best to prepare the team," he suggested.

"Do you think our team is unable to handle any situation the transgenics might throw at us?" 

White's voice was dangerously calm.  It wasn't that he was really all that angry about the question being posed; frankly he'd been wondering when Otto would get up the guts to ask it.  But he did love to watch his assistant squirm.

"No sir!"  Otto seemed shocked by the suggestion, although on him it wore the same way as fear.  "Sir, it's just... we had the child, or as good as.  We knew where she was.  Why didn't we just take her into custody?  Why let the transgenic have her?"

"Why, why, why," White mocked.  "You worry too much, Otto.  Why do you do that?"  He clapped Otto on the back, and tried not to smile too broadly when he felt the man flinch.  "I have a plan... no, we have a plan.  And it's a good one.  Trust me, when you find out the details, you're going to thank me."

Otto could feel his supervisor's hand pushing him none too subtly towards the door.  Obviously White had said all he was going to say for the moment, and making an issue of it would only create more problems.

Problems for Otto, that is.

"Yes sir," he said miserably as he pulled open the door and stepped out.  "Thank you sir."

White was smiling as he closed the door behind his assistant. Otto probably had a lower IQ than the cocker spaniel his father used to create Dog Boy, but the man was definitely polite.  It was an attitude that could get him killed in a job like theirs.

And if Otto was lucky, that was the worst that would happen.

* * * * *