Chapter 25:

A/N: I know I'm taking forever with this, but at least it's coming right?

Disclaimer: I have no ownership, sad, but true.

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It wasn't that it took Bart a long while to wake up. In fact, she was painfully aware of her surroundings the moment the door cracked open, her blissful, deep sleep evaporating. Really she was just trying to ignore the lingering presence of the X-6 in the doorway, hoping she'd get the hint and leave. Unless it was an emergency... dear lord... how many of those could there be in a week?

"What do you want?" Bart asked, the words muffled from the half pillow in her mouth. She didn't open her eyes. "And damn it Kes, it had better be good." It came out a growl, annoyed, just a little bite. Enough to let the X-6 know she was serious.

"Sir..." Sir, that tickled Bart in no small way. The corner of her mouth quirked upward, but she kept her eyes shut. No way, no how was she getting out of bed unless... "It's Max sir." The younger girl managed to stammer out. At that, Bart's eyes flew open. She was upright in an instant, slamming her feet into her boots, grumbling.

"What the hell did he manage to do now?" She grunted as her right heel slammed into place and she lurched upright.

"He, sir?" Kes queried.

"He. Alec. He." She was in no mood for twenty questions, her mind was already racing to figure out ways to securely hogtie her most difficult patient.

"Umm, actually she has a child. A little girl." Gray eyes narrowed and Bart slipped past Kes into the hallway. The X-6 executed an immediate about face and fell into step behind the medic.

"Third door on the right," Kes informed her. Bart turned on her heel and flew through the doorway, not bothering to stop it from slamming in Kes' face.

Upon Bart's arrival, Max stopped dead from where she had been doing her best to wear a track in the linoleum. A tiny, swaddled bundle was cradled in her arms, close to her chest. The high pitched wail assaulted Bart's ears. She clapped her hands over her hands in reflex. "Holy crap."

"She's burning up Pez, and she won't stop crying and Alec left her with me and I don't know where Bast is and I can't let anything happen to her because Alec would forgive me and she's just a kid and I don't know what's wrong with her but there's a welt on her neck and what the hell could it be that would affect a transgenic kid that...."

"Whoa!" Bart threw her hands into the air, hoping to stop Max's motor mouthed run on sentence. "Whoa!" Max stopped talking, but dark eyes looked to her pleadingly. "Okay," the medic said with as much calm as she could muster, "first things first. You need to start at the beginning... slowly."

Max forced herself to take a slow breath. "Alec asked me to watch Kai a few hours ago. She was upset when he left, crying, and she was a little warm. I was keeping an eye on her," Max said, as if to reassure herself as well as Bart, "and she seemed okay, uncomfortable, but okay. But when I checked on her again a few minutes ago she was quiet, crying and her fever spiked. And I found this," Max gently pulled down on the collar of Kai's shirt, revealing the small red welt.

Brow furrowed, Bart held out her arms for the child. Reluctantly, Max handed Kai over. Rocking Kai gently, Bart carried her over to the nearest exam table. In moments she had shed Kai of her clothing, leaving her in nothing but a diaper, and revealing several more small red welts. Max grimaced and cursed a God neither of them believed in. Always the Blue Lady, but never quite mother of the Messiah.

"Well that's..." Bart pursed her lips, "...vexing." Strange, tiny red bumps, something fluttered in the rear recesses of her mind, but she couldn't pin it down.

"Vexing?" Max asked, indignant. "I bring you an X-series child, sick, covered in unexplained welts, and you give me vexing? I don't want vexing, I want to know what the hell it is!"

Bart's gray eyes travelled sideways. "Do you think this qualifies as helping?" she growled. "I don't know what it is. I don't even know what it could be, because we know jack crap next to nothing about these kids. But... somehow..." she shook her head, thoughts flying a mile a minute behind gunmetal eyes. "I need to draw blood." By all appearances Bart went about her business in her usual calm, unaffected manner, but inwardly she was in a panic. Could this be the Conclave's end game? Start with the youngest, stop the transgenic threat in its tracks? And Max, Sandeman's answer, still much more enigma than solution. Frustrating, all of it.

The small vial filled quickly with Kai's blood, not that the needle had one iota of impact on the wailing child. Strangely, her fever didn't seem particularly high, a fact she could garner with even the quickest pass over the child's forehead, elevated sure, but not to the level she would have expected.

Still looking at Kai, Bart took a step back, only to bump into Max. Bart whirled, hands flying upward, the tiny vial of blood clenched between her thumb and palm in her right hand. "Seriously?" she cried. "You hover now?" Her frustration and total lack of sleep was definitely getting the better of her, but she didn't care. "You know what? Go be helpful, and not here."

Dark eyes blazed as Max's hackles rose. "Where the hell do you get off..."

"Max, not like I need two of you here, or worse yet three, but how bout you go find Alec and Bast. I know you were just trying to get her some help, and you did that, now I need you to go get them. Or hell, just go into the hall and call Alec, but you gotta get out of my hair and let me do my job. It's not a personal thing, but it is a personal space thing, and really, you're driving me a little nuts."

"I can't call him," Max said with a sigh, "actually I already tried. He must still be with Pez. He turns off his phone. Look Bart, I know I'm in the way, I just don't know the rules with this one."

Bart sighed. "Yeah, none of us do. Go get him, come back, and hopefully I'll have some kind of answer."

--

Meanwhile, in the midst of Max's flight to the infirmary, Alec was trying hard to keep his ass from falling asleep on the cement as he went verbal rounds with Pez. Two steps forward, one back, and three sideways, a crazy, listing, transgenic waltz. She wouldn't eat, but she didn't want to die. She didn't shoot at the reporters, but she wouldn't tell him who did. His patience was fast running thin, and he couldn't even pretend it wasn't because Kai was waiting and home for him, waiting with Max.

Now he was at a loss, he'd played his hand and she just stared through it, or spoke circles around his head. "You shouldn't do this Pez, shouldn't give up. You know what it's gonna do to Poe?"

A flash. A spark of life in deep, dead pools of amber. "Poe?" she said, the name catching high in her throat, till she had to choke it out.

"Yeah," he let his hands fall over his knees, like he was bored. "You know, your sister who loves you."

"Love?" she repeated questioningly with a sharp tilt of her chin. "I know it, what it is and what it does. I've loved those things I've lost, the things that hurt me worst. You know it too. First Rachel, then Max." She laughed as she took in his expression, but it was mirthless. "Come on, you and I both know she's hurt you too much for it to be anything other than love. Love builds you up, so it can tear you apart. Make you better, sometimes, maybe. And it has with you, I've seen it, longer than most. Rachel tore away the soldier, Max helped build the man, and Kai will make you... something else. So maybe in the end love is for the good, but don't pretend for a second it doesn't hurt like hell."

Alec's jaw clenched, but he said nothing. This was as much as she'd talked since being put down here, and it was certainly the clearest. Pez stopped then, and Alec waited, and she rocked. "Poe's pregnant," Pez uttered, so quietly even Alec's transgenic ears almost missed it. He stiffened. "She's pregnant, and I can barely even look at her." The tears came, slowly at first, filling the corners of her eyes till they overflowed down her cheeks. Then it was a river, free flowing over the edge of a falls. "Not fair," Pez shook her head, clutching at her belly with both hands. "Parts, pieces of me they took and never set back... till they broke it."

Dread, cold and heavy settled deep in Alec's gut. It couldn't be true. Not even Manticore... He moved then, slowly drawing his feet underneath him, boots scraping the floor. He moved slowly, across the basement and crouched down beside a still rocking Pez, eyes shut tight but never stemming the river flow. Alec cupped her chin in his hands, wiping at her cheeks with his thumbs. "Pez, what happened in the basement after Simon went away?"

Lids flew open, and she fixed him with the most piercing look he'd ever experienced, and it was every bit the Pez he'd met back when X5 722 had first walked into his world for the second time. "You really think Manticore would start a breeding program without making sure we would be viable breeding vessels first?" she asked coldly, bitterly. "And without being sure our offspring would be what they hoped?"

"Three months the first time," she told him, the words coming freer now, this painful past finally brought to light. "And the second..." her voice caught, "the second one cried when they took her away. And then they took the last piece of me that mattered, took it to study, and I will never be Poe. I hate them for it, but part of me hates her too."

And then she broke in his arms, walls crashing, disintegrating. A tidal wave of grief held back for too long for those she'd loved and lost, those she never even knew. Grief for what was taken and a future she could never have. And all the while Alec held her, cheek pressed into the top of her head, humming a song he didn't know.

--

Max kept herself to a jog trot as she headed across TC toward the deep freeze where Pez was being held. Blurring would have gotten her there more quickly, but she worried she might fly past Alec without noticing him. She tried dialing him again, only to snap her phone shut, irritated, a few seconds later. "Come on Alec," turn your phone back on."

Max turned a corner, her stride lengthening. Then she noticed an all to familiar and none too welcome blonde head walking a hundred or so yards in front of her. Much as she didn't like Bast, she couldn't exactly fly past Kai's mother without letting her know what was going on.

"Bast!" Max called out. The blonde X5 paused, but did not stop or turn around. She just gave a quick shake of her head and kept walking. Irritated, Max followed her, quickly closing the gap between them. "Bast, I need to talk to you. It's about Kai." That did it. The blonde stopped dead in her tracks, turning slowly to face the approaching Max.

"What about Kai?" she asked suspiciously.

"She's sick," Max explained. Bast noticeably stiffened. "She's got a fever, and some weird.... bumps, all over her. I ran her over to the infirmary. Bart's running some tests, try to find out what's going on." Max couldn't help but feel bad for her, watching Bast's face drain of color. Had to be hard, hell, she was stressed and it wasn't even her kid.

Bast's tongue flicked out over her lips. "Bart's running tests?" she questioned, nervousness coloring each word. "Why'd you take her there?"

"Kinda figured taking her to the only one of us with any kind of medical knowledge was probably a good idea." Max answered dryly.

"How long ago?"

"Twenty minutes, not long."

"Damn it," Bast breathed. Without a further word to Max she took off, blurring out of sight toward the infirmary. Max shook her head. Oddball, that one. But, she had to admit, it was the first time she'd ever seen any kind of maternal instinct pop up in Bast. Maybe, just maybe, Kai getting sick would help the other X5 realize just how important the little girl was. With a small shake of her head, Max once again headed in Alec's direction.

--

After a few minutes Pez's sobbing subsided. Her shoulders still quaked beneath Alec's hands, but the racking sobs slowed. She pulled back from him then, wiping at a few residual tears on her own. Alec stayed crouched, waiting.

Pez leaned back against the wall, and for the first time in weeks, Alec saw nothing of the manic craze in her eyes. Her entire body slumped, tired, and strangely, relaxed. "Hadn't told anybody that," she admitted. "Please, don't tell Poe."

"I won't," he agreed, and meant it. "I'm so sorry Pez."

"Yeah, me too."

"Still doesn't explain the rifle you know."

"It wasn't me," Pez shook her head. She regarded him with a sideways glance. "Funny, isn't it? How we always end up together in the dark, because of your women?"

Alec stifled a grimace. Back to riddles and sideways talk once more, but at least there wasn't any rocking. "Max didn't see she had much of a choice. You weren't exactly in a state of mind to be reasoned with."

A sad smile passed over her face. "No Alec, not Max."

"Well if not Max then who..." the word died as it passed his lips, as he realized he already knew.

"You know what lies, just on the leeward side of love Alec? Hate. Only one person with enough hate for herself, to hate us all. And especially you." She nodded at him. "Like I said, not wanting to know, is not the same as not knowing."

"Shit." Alec leapt to his feet, and crossed the cell in less time than it took to blink. He banged roughly on the cell door. Swain opened it, gazing at him curiously. "Stay with her," he ordered, "but let her leave if she wants to."

"Yes sir," Swain answered, somewhat bewildered. Then Alec took off at a hard run.

--

It was that feeling of wrong. Bart felt it, and she hated it, especially since she didn't know why. It all seemed familiar, like she'd seen in someplace before. But that didn't make sense. Bart pulled her eye away from the microscope, a surprisingly decent model they'd ransacked from an old hospital storage room.

The virus marched around Kai's blood like a five piece band, making lots of noise and trashing hotel rooms as it went, but it didn't seem particularly rampant. Or even all that unusual for that matter. If this virus did come from White's conclave lackeys, they weren't trying too hard. But something still felt off.

Bart rode from her chair, striding over to a small bookcase set against the East wall of the room. She pulled a medical volume from the collection, reflexively wiping the dust from the cover. She kept these on hand for the X6's to study, anatomy, human disease and the like. She thumbed through the pages, letting her mind relax, hoping something would strike her when she passed it.

And then there it was, staring at her in bold print. Varcilla Zoster. Bart's whole body went numb. It couldn't be. But that would mean...

The door slammed open, rattling the walls. Bart dropped the book and whirled. "Bast, I should have known. How could you?"

"Where is Kai?" the blonde X5 demanded, breathing heavily.

Bart edged closer to her desk, where she kept a 9mm safely stowed in the bottom desk drawer. "Do you have any idea what this is going to do to him?"

"Of course I know," she sneered. "That was the whole point." Then she rushed the desk, drawing her gun. The two women grappled, but Bast was bigger, stronger, and with far more experience in hand to hand. The butt of the gun slammed into the base of Bart's skull, and she crumpled to the floor as everything went black.

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Chapter 26

Amazing what two snow days and unexpected days off from work can do. I wrote!!! Hopefully you enjoy it. Reviews are greatly appreciated.