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grumkin_snarkStory Title: Of Desire and the Status Quo
Chapter Title: If It Had to Perish Twice
Fandom(s): Supernatural, Dark Angel
Summary: In the end, it’s a complete accident that gets Dean Winchester out of Hell.
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Unfortunately, I neither own Supernatural nor Dark Angel. Just this.
Standing up and quickly gaining her equilibrium, she looks around the abandoned warehouse; she notices Cindy’s still out cold on the floor—Ordinaries generally recover slower than transgenics—and after another scan, finds Zero sitting with his knees scrunched up against one of the concrete support beams. His expression is hard to read; a mix of irresolution, frustration, disappointment, boredom, and a few others she doesn’t have time to decode.
“Zero?” Max asks groggily, putting a hand to her head where it had hit the ground as Dean’d delivered the last blow. “Where—Where’s Dean?”
Zero looks up at her like he’s got all the time in the world. Though Max doesn’t think it’s exactly that, more that he doesn’t know what to make of the whole thing. “He left,” Zero says simply. “Said he had to find his brother.”
“Shit,” Max curses violently, exhaling roughly and shifting her weight. “Did you see where he went? I mean, he couldn’t have gone that far…I can probably catch him…”
Looking uncomfortable, Zero clears his throat before clarifying, “Um, actually, I think he took your motorcycle.”
Max’s face turns from confidence to fury, and she runs over to the doorway of the warehouse, where, lo and behold, her Ninja had vanished. The scorch marks from burned rubber corroborate Zero’s story, and she’s none too pleased about this. Seriously, her motorcycle. Had absolutely all etiquette left?
“He didn’t say where he was going?” she asks in a last ditch effort.
Zero shakes his head, neglecting to mention that he hadn’t even thought to ask that of Dean. Not that he would have expected Dean to tell him, but that’s kind of beside the point.
With a final, half-strangled groan, Max sets her brain to figuring out how she’s supposed to get this whole thing sorted out. Unfortunately, all she gets for a while are three words: “Damn it, Dean.”
A hurried request to Zero to watch over Cindy while she sorts something out and exchange of phone numbers, and Max is sprinting out the door, squinting into the driving rain. Her motorcycle is gone, that much she’s already discovered, and although she’s pissed about it, she’s more frustrated; finding Dean on foot would’ve been hard enough. Now that he’s got a motorized vehicle… But she’s never pleased with giving up, so she blurs down the alleyway, heading in the direction of Terminal City. She knows when she’s beat and when a situation is fruitless; there’s no feasible way she can locate Dean while he’s on her bike—not to mention he’s Dean, who she thinks could disappear in a cropped field being surveilled by a helicopter—and getting to T.C. and her people is, she feels, going to be the best option at the moment.
It’ll be a good twenty or thirty minutes on foot, given that she has to factor in avoiding people like the plague, but she has concern and anger going for her, so she blanks her mind as completely as she can, Seattle’s layout mapped in her head.
Back in the Command Center, Alec’s going over inventory with Mole—read: playing poker to get his mind off things, and winning admirably—when the doors fly open, letting in a small torrent of rain before they shut. Alec looks up, Max’s soaked-as-all-hell body exactly the one he’d wanted to see. Quickly, he lays down his hand and tells Mole he folds. (The lizard-man picks up Alec’s cards, sees he’d had a royal flush, and wonders what the hell is his problem.)
“Max!” Alec shouts, jogging over to her. “There’s something I have to talk to you about.”
Max looks at him, but her agitated state doesn’t allow for her full attention. “Alec, I don’t have time,” she says hurriedly. “I think Dean might be in trouble.”
“Dean?” Alec asks incredulously. How can she not realize? If people in T.C. knew about this… “Max—”
“I need to find him,” Max says, edging past Alec.
Turning around and addressing her fervidly again, Alec stresses, “It’s fucking important!”
He almost recourses to blurting out his predicament, regardless of whoever in the Command Center might be overhearing. Risking bodily harm, Alec grabs Max’s arm forcefully, turning her around to face him, using enough strength to where it’d be inadvisable for her to try and wrench him off.
She looks down at his hand indignantly. “What?” she asks laboriously.
Alec glances around the room, where, due to his action, a few more transgenics had switched their awareness to their two commanding officers. “In private,” Alec says, begging Max to see his desperation.
Sighing, Max nods. “All right, we’ll talk,” she says, but then adds sternly, “But you’re going to have to help me find someone whether you like it or not.”
Alec crosses his arms, amused by how Max thinks she can make him do anything whatsoever. “Gonna have to sweeten the pot there, Maxie,” he mocks, the innuendo (if off-the-cuff) clear. “It’ll take more than attempted intimidation to make me go after a psycho that looks like me.”
Max starts to retort, and then halts herself. “Wait…how do you know that?” she asks, her glare turning to suspicion.
Clenching his jaw, he stares right back, actually a little pleased with the segue into what he’d come to talk to Max about in the first place. “You didn’t expect me to just leave the dream like I did,” Alec comments mutedly.
“I didn’t know what it was about,” Max defends, a small crease appearing between her brows. Damn it all, but it’s hard to scowl when she’s being bombarded by the terrible images of Alec in his nightmare. “It was about Dean?”
“I only saw Sam,” Alec admits, unwilling to go into the details but acknowledging that he kind of does have to. “But I commandeered Dix to help me out, and he brought up stuff on Dean, too. A little bit of a buzzkill to find out your likeness is a serial killer whackjob.”
Max releases the tension in her posture. “I’m sorry,” Max says, this time wholly serious. At least Max’s twin had only been as "serial killer whackjob"-y as the rest of Manticore’s experiments were. Dean, on the other hand, is a whole new level of freak for them.
“Forget it. Doesn’t matter.” Silence passes for a few moments, and then Max nods.
“Tell you what,” she says, giving Alec a sly smile. “You help me find Dean, I’ll help you figure out what the deal is with you guys.”
Alec snorts, an obvious refusal. “Try again,” he replies stubbornly. “You’d want to figure out the connection regardless. Why don’t you just get your boy toy to help you out?”
Fed up with the day and really just wanting a shot of something, Alec moves to pass Max again. This time, despite her annoyance with his jab at Logan, she allows him to go by. It’s only until after that she realizes she has to resort to the barest reserves of her ability to beseech.
“Alec, wait,” she calls, and he sighs before turning around, unamused. “Would you please just do this for me?” She shrugs in defeat. “You’re the only person who could help me out.”
As she’d anticipated, Alec’s eyebrows raise in dubiety. “Shameless ass-kissing,” he remarks with absent interest. “Wow, you’re more invested in this than I thought.”
“Come on,” Max says, attempting to keep her frustration at bay. Appealing to someone doesn’t work very well when you get pissed off at them. “You know as well as I do that anyone else from T.C. wouldn’t understand.”
“I don’t understand!”
“And you know that Logan doesn’t have the physicality to chase Dean down, which is what we’d probably end up having to do,” Max continues, ignoring Alec’s outcry, and disliking herself for boldly pointing out Logan’s admittedly very true limitations. His exoskeleton worked miracles, and truthfully, he most likely could prove his worth, but…in this case, Max is still too out of her element without worrying what would happen if Logan met up with Dean (or vice versa, for that matter). No, she’d much rather Logan stay safe in Sandeman’s house. “Please, Alec. He could die.”
Alec’s face is even more upset than before, if it’s possible. “He’s already supposed to be dead, Max,” he says, thinking back to the reports of Monument, Colorado, and the police station explosion. “In what way would I care if the guy goes back to that? I’d really like to just forget this whole thing even happened. Life is up the creek enough without having this horseshit swirling around everything.”
“I thought you said you wanted to get to the bottom of what your nightmare meant,” Max says, feeling a twinge of guilt at exploiting what had obviously been a sickeningly bad ordeal. True to the words, Alec’s expression turns both incredulous and murderous, like he hadn’t expected her to stoop that low. “All I’m saying,” Max hastens, heavily considering taking a step back or two from him, “is that maybe Dean can fill in some of the blanks. Besides, what about the coincidence that your nightmare happened around the same time that Dean appeared? Don’t you think that means something?”
Alec doesn’t respond, just stands there tensely, his fingernails digging into his crossed arms. Max can see him vacillating rapidly between the two options, and she knows, somehow, that for the most part, it’s not the actual rescuing of Dean that’s halting him. Not even the fact that it’s Dean Winchester. More, she would bet her life on, in the vein of Alec being afraid of what he’d find. What his link is to Dean, to Sam, to the both of them.
She knows he hates mysteries, but he hates finding out things that, were this Manticore, would determine him as having some kind of defection or mental deficiency. They both know it’s irrational, and she doubts Alec is aware that she can see what ails him, but it’s still one of Alec’s fears, and Max knows that’s his main misgiving in going to save Dean. Had this been Sam (X5-453, not Sam Winchester, that is), and presuming they hadn’t already met her, Alec would have gone with Max to spring her without question. Mockery, maybe, but not questioning, let alone full-on recalcitrance.
“Even if I did go with you, there’s no way we could find him,” Alec says quietly, his change in demeanor giving Max a whiplash. “He’s probably halfway to Idaho by now.”
Max shakes her head, the idea just now coming to her. “I know the timeframe. We can see if Dix can hack into some satellite imagery, try to track him that way.”
Alec doesn’t answer her, just does that strange visible insecurity again.
“Please, Alec.”
Like the world was just dropped on his shoulders, Alec ducks his head and exhales. “Okay,” he says leadenly.
Max gazes at him for a few more minutes contritely before heading towards Command, ready to ask for Dix’s assistance. She’d usually ask Logan to do this sort of thing—and, truthfully, she had been thinking of it when she’d first proposed the GPS idea—but the whole situation is already fucked up as it is, and adding to what her thoughts were initially about Logan coming with them Alec’s extremely tenuous assent to get Dean back, she doesn’t want to aggravate it. And if there’s anyone who can irritate Alec, it’s Logan.
For all their forced politeness when in the same room together, or even when just the few times they refer to one another, Max knows they’ll always be oil and water. Logan harboring resentment that Alec is, at least biologically, superior in most (if not all) ways to him; not to mention, Alec can touch Max should he choose to, where Logan is unable to do so. Alec harboring resentment that Logan’s…well, Max doesn’t really know why Alec doesn’t like Logan, but he doesn’t nonetheless.
“Okay, so, where would you go if you were being followed?” Max starts up again, attempting to keep her voice as placating as possible. Now that she has Alec’s affiliation, she’s hoping to utilize his and Dean’s potential—probable—similarities. She’s confident she could find Dean alone, but if Alec could narrow down the search parameters, she’s all for that.
Alec’s not so endeared to the idea, but he puts all pride to the wind indeterminably. He also thinks Max’s question is kind of a moot point since he’d really rather not associate himself with Dean Winchester, thank you very much, but he’ll humor her for the time being. He hasn’t been followed often (he was too good at his job for that), but if he can pretend he was and in a not previously encountered situation…
“I’d get to the nearest place I could find that had adequate protection,” says Alec. His sight wanders out the window, and it hits him as hard as when he’d first remembered who the Winchesters were. “Space Needle,” he says with a level of certainty that has no logical roots.
“Alec,” Max says carefully, “are you—”
“I’m sure, Max!” Alec exclaims harshly. “It’s where I’d go.”
“All right,” Max allows. “I trust you.”
It’s the first time Max has actually said the words to Alec, and although he’s primarily surprised, it’s neither the time nor place to psychoanalyze semantics. Taking Alec’s response as gospel (it’s as good a place to start looking as any) and hearing his slow, trudging steps behind her, she walks up the steps to the computer terminals, sitting on the corner of Dix’s desk. He looks up at her through his monocle, confused. “Can you do me a favor?”
Dix looks at Alec covertly, silently asking him if the reason he came with Max—it’s no secret Alec tries to get out of doing any work that someone else can do—is at all because of what Alec had asked Dix to do before. Despite this, Max doesn’t miss the look and, Alec having told her about his previous request for Dix, gripes, “Yes, it has to do with Dean Winchester, now can we move on please?”
Her voice is still low enough to prevent anyone else from overhearing, and though she does doubt that any of those in T.C. would register the name, it’s still a risk she doesn’t want to take. Dix has an expression of the slightest amusement as he replies, “Okay, but I found all the info I could on him. It would take me a while to find any more.”
It’s clear that Dix really would rather not spend another five hours without any guarantee of new knowledge. “We know,” Max says, although she’s still peeved at Alec for not telling her in the first place. “We need you to hack into a satellite feed. The area around the Space Needle starting ninety minutes ago. We’re thinking Dean might’ve headed over there, and need to see where he would’ve gone after.”
Dix immediately gets to work. After a minute or so, he looks up at his two CO’s, still typing. “Am I missing something here?” he asks.
“No.”
“Yes.”
Max glares at Alec as he replies at the same time as she had, but Alec really couldn’t care less. After all, he considers this as having more to do with him than Max. “Max here thinks her new pet has been kidnapped and she wants to get him back home safe and sound,” he elaborates sarcastically.
Frowning, Dix glances between Max and Alec, before saying slowly, “Isn’t Dean Winchester kind of a—”
“—creepy as hell sociopathic murderer and my replica?” Alec finishes. “Yeah. But Maxie chooses to ignore that fact.”
Forecasting a squabble that won’t have anything to do with him, Dix redirects his attention back to accessing satellites. “You agreed to this!” Max objects hotly, proving Dix right. “What is this?”
“Pardon me for not wanting to find a guy who’s supposed to be dead anyway.”
“Could you be any more childish? This isn’t just about you! It could be exposure for all of us, you know.”
“Weak excuse. Who’s to say he isn’t faking? Maybe he killed Sam!”
“Yeah, right. Sounds just like him.”
“Guys.”
“Why do you like this dude so much? How is he any better than me?”
“Stop whining, Alec.”
“Guys?”
“If he kills us all, don’t come crying to me!”
“First of all, I’d never go crying to you. Second of all, if we were all killed, I wouldn’t even be able to.”
“Technicality.”
“Guys!”
“WHAT?”
Max and Alec both turn back to Dix, wearing identical faces of irritation and vehemence. Dix oddly doesn’t see much actual anger—mainly just impassion—but if Dean—holy crap, that is so crazy to think of what Dix is doing for his leaders—but he gestures to his computer screen. “I found a feedback. Looks like your motorcycle arrived there about an hour ago.”
“Yeah, dude stole it,” Alec snipes, now only goading, considering he truly has no moral problems about stealing. “Stand-up guy, really.”
“Shut up, Alec.”
“It looks like he went to the top and—” Dix pauses, looking closer at the screen. “Two guys went up after him. Something happened up there; apparently he lost a fight or something,” Dix continues, getting a bad feeling. “It’s kind of hard to see because of the weather, but around fifteen minutes later, a black car drives away. License plate 450-K something.”
Max leans down to peer at the images Dix had brought up. She notices Dean had hid her bike underneath a piece of sheet metal, and she’s glad he didn’t do something worse to it. She’d have to clean it up thoroughly and check for scratches and whatnot, but at least it isn’t lying in a ditch somewhere. She’s trying to keep her mind off the whirling maelstrom of bad things that could have happened to Dean. Mainly concerning who would have wanted to take Dean. And why.
“Can you tell where the car went?” Alec asks, finally piping up with something useful. But Max looks at his pinched face, and knows he’s thinking along the same lines as she.
Dix shakes his head regrettably. “Sorry,” he answers. “The satellite cuts out. Best I can tell you is the direction.”
Max doesn’t know what to do with the shoddy information, but after taking only a fleeting glimpse of the video, Alec hops down the stairs and over to a table covered with papers. Shuffling through them, he comes up with a large and detailed map of the city. Max follows, and stares down. She’d ask what he’s doing, but one look at his face full of concentration, and she stays silent.
“Where did you say you lost him from?” Alec asks pragmatically, and Max, choosing to brush off his maybe-unintentional jab, wordlessly points at where the warehouse had been. Alec runs his finger along some streets until he gets to Seattle’s central monument. Obviously doing rapid-fire computations in his head, Alec then moves his finger in a broad, but not impossibly so, circle.
“They’re going to be within this diameter,” he continues assuredly. “I don’t know if they would’ve stopped before getting out of it or if they’re still driving, but they couldn’t have gotten farther than here” Alec prods his finger at a spot close to Penn Cove, “based on the time and speed range they may have been going.”
“Who do you think took him?” Max asks, aiming for withholding any fear, but not quite succeeding. Alec stares at her hard for a few seconds, silently telling her his best guess. “Why would White want him?” she says quietly, her voice between hate and dread.
“I don’t know,” Alec answers ruefully. “But if it is White, we’d need to look for an abandoned bunker or something similar. He’d go for massive, but not flashy. Considering his captive of choice, my guess is that he’d go for some kind of torture, which would mean he’d most likely need access to lab equipment.”
Max stares at Alec for a few moments, before briefly touching his shoulder in gratitude despite the dire circumstances, and then heading back over to Dix to tell him what Alec had deduced, after which she proceeds to pace agitatedly. For his part, Alec merely sits down at the table, concentrating on the map as if Dean’s route were in motion, Max’s motorcycle with him behind the handlebars, dodging White through the streets, ending up at the Space Needle and then disappearing with whatever crony White had commissioned. Alec doesn’t know why White would want to go after Dean—or, for that matter, how White had even found Dean—but it’s not Alec’s job to figure that out. He’s only being commissioned for the rescue and return part of it. He doesn’t have any additional plans to be involved. It’s all way beyond his pay grade.
Seven very tense minutes later, Dix makes a noise of triumph. “I think I got something!” the transhuman exclaims. As Max and Alec hasten over, Max shushes him in continued fear of others overhearing. They both look over Dix’s shoulder, peering at the GPS image. Dix points to a gray building in the middle of what was probably a state park years before. “It’s the only building that resembles a bunker in the area Alec said.”
“Where is it?” asks Alec, trying to triangulate the location but not having much luck.
“Forty miles northeast of here,” Dix answers. “I’ll give you the coordinates.”
“Super. Won’t be much more’n twenty-five,” Alec comments, grinning at the fact that because of Max’s concern over Dean, he’d be able to go all out speed-wise.
Max, a little regrettably, has to object. “We can’t drive there,” she says. Alec snaps his head over to her, outraged. “It’ll draw commotion. We’ll have to stay to the side streets, and then that forest by the bunker.”
“Wait, you want us to hike forty fucking miles over to this place?” Alec confirms hotly. “I did not sign up for this.”
Max levels a glare at him, to which he promptly pays no mind. “Oh, please, you know we can run full out for more than that,” she chides.
“Doesn’t mean I want to!” Alec complains, looking again at the GPS as if it will suddenly change the coordinates to closer to Terminal City. “Think of all the time we’d save driving.”
“Yeah, think of all the attention we’ll get when White and the Familiars hear us coming,” Max retorts back. In the resolute expression that only Max can possess, she says with finalizing decree, “White won’t kill Dean between now and the time we get there. We’re locked and loaded in three, Alec.”
Alec gapes for more than a few seconds, during which Max rolls her eyes and hurries off, presumably to fortify herself with her customary jacket, perhaps squeeze out the water from her clothes and change shoes (not that Terminal City is exactly a mall, but Max is reasonably sure she can rummage up something dry).
Feeling Dix’s galled, half-amused gaze, Alec narrows his eyes. “Say nothing,” he says curtly.
Stomping off, Alec beelines straight for the armory, fully intending to outfit himself with every weapon he can fit on his person. Manticore made sure their soldiers knew every possible hold for a weapon, and Alec aced that part of training. Hell, he knows how to pass a government frisking. Really, really not wanting to go through with this plan and wishing his conscience would let him leave Dean in White’s clutches to die a horrible death, Alec snatches up a nine-mil, then moves on to knives.
Next
Chapter Title: If It Had to Perish Twice
Fandom(s): Supernatural, Dark Angel
Summary: In the end, it’s a complete accident that gets Dean Winchester out of Hell.
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Unfortunately, I neither own Supernatural nor Dark Angel. Just this.
Of Desire and the Status Quo
Chapter IX: If It Had to Perish Twice
Sitting up carefully and glaring at the empty doorway through which Dean had just disappeared, Max puts her hand up to touch her jaw. The skin is raised and she imagines black and blue as well, and she thinks she underestimated Dean once again. She knows she’s faster than him, and if it came down to a fight with weapons and they were a dozen feet from each other, she’d probably win. But Dean’s specialty, she’s very quickly finding out, is hand-to-hand combat, and when he’s close enough to a target, he’s a whirlwind of fists, boots, elbows, and head, even a blade if he had it.
And, of course, the fact that Dean’s trained a hell of a lot differently than she is, and considering the majority of the people that she’s fought are either Manticore creations (and thus being taught the same way she was), or Ordinaries (who likely weren’t taught anything at all, or sucked at it), she’s not used to an alternate brand of fighting. She plans to remedy that soon. Maybe ask one of the combat models back at Terminal City. They’d know a hundred kinds of battle techniques.Standing up and quickly gaining her equilibrium, she looks around the abandoned warehouse; she notices Cindy’s still out cold on the floor—Ordinaries generally recover slower than transgenics—and after another scan, finds Zero sitting with his knees scrunched up against one of the concrete support beams. His expression is hard to read; a mix of irresolution, frustration, disappointment, boredom, and a few others she doesn’t have time to decode.
“Zero?” Max asks groggily, putting a hand to her head where it had hit the ground as Dean’d delivered the last blow. “Where—Where’s Dean?”
Zero looks up at her like he’s got all the time in the world. Though Max doesn’t think it’s exactly that, more that he doesn’t know what to make of the whole thing. “He left,” Zero says simply. “Said he had to find his brother.”
“Shit,” Max curses violently, exhaling roughly and shifting her weight. “Did you see where he went? I mean, he couldn’t have gone that far…I can probably catch him…”
Looking uncomfortable, Zero clears his throat before clarifying, “Um, actually, I think he took your motorcycle.”
Max’s face turns from confidence to fury, and she runs over to the doorway of the warehouse, where, lo and behold, her Ninja had vanished. The scorch marks from burned rubber corroborate Zero’s story, and she’s none too pleased about this. Seriously, her motorcycle. Had absolutely all etiquette left?
“He didn’t say where he was going?” she asks in a last ditch effort.
Zero shakes his head, neglecting to mention that he hadn’t even thought to ask that of Dean. Not that he would have expected Dean to tell him, but that’s kind of beside the point.
With a final, half-strangled groan, Max sets her brain to figuring out how she’s supposed to get this whole thing sorted out. Unfortunately, all she gets for a while are three words: “Damn it, Dean.”
A hurried request to Zero to watch over Cindy while she sorts something out and exchange of phone numbers, and Max is sprinting out the door, squinting into the driving rain. Her motorcycle is gone, that much she’s already discovered, and although she’s pissed about it, she’s more frustrated; finding Dean on foot would’ve been hard enough. Now that he’s got a motorized vehicle… But she’s never pleased with giving up, so she blurs down the alleyway, heading in the direction of Terminal City. She knows when she’s beat and when a situation is fruitless; there’s no feasible way she can locate Dean while he’s on her bike—not to mention he’s Dean, who she thinks could disappear in a cropped field being surveilled by a helicopter—and getting to T.C. and her people is, she feels, going to be the best option at the moment.
It’ll be a good twenty or thirty minutes on foot, given that she has to factor in avoiding people like the plague, but she has concern and anger going for her, so she blanks her mind as completely as she can, Seattle’s layout mapped in her head.
Back in the Command Center, Alec’s going over inventory with Mole—read: playing poker to get his mind off things, and winning admirably—when the doors fly open, letting in a small torrent of rain before they shut. Alec looks up, Max’s soaked-as-all-hell body exactly the one he’d wanted to see. Quickly, he lays down his hand and tells Mole he folds. (The lizard-man picks up Alec’s cards, sees he’d had a royal flush, and wonders what the hell is his problem.)
“Max!” Alec shouts, jogging over to her. “There’s something I have to talk to you about.”
Max looks at him, but her agitated state doesn’t allow for her full attention. “Alec, I don’t have time,” she says hurriedly. “I think Dean might be in trouble.”
“Dean?” Alec asks incredulously. How can she not realize? If people in T.C. knew about this… “Max—”
“I need to find him,” Max says, edging past Alec.
Turning around and addressing her fervidly again, Alec stresses, “It’s fucking important!”
He almost recourses to blurting out his predicament, regardless of whoever in the Command Center might be overhearing. Risking bodily harm, Alec grabs Max’s arm forcefully, turning her around to face him, using enough strength to where it’d be inadvisable for her to try and wrench him off.
She looks down at his hand indignantly. “What?” she asks laboriously.
Alec glances around the room, where, due to his action, a few more transgenics had switched their awareness to their two commanding officers. “In private,” Alec says, begging Max to see his desperation.
Sighing, Max nods. “All right, we’ll talk,” she says, but then adds sternly, “But you’re going to have to help me find someone whether you like it or not.”
Alec crosses his arms, amused by how Max thinks she can make him do anything whatsoever. “Gonna have to sweeten the pot there, Maxie,” he mocks, the innuendo (if off-the-cuff) clear. “It’ll take more than attempted intimidation to make me go after a psycho that looks like me.”
Max starts to retort, and then halts herself. “Wait…how do you know that?” she asks, her glare turning to suspicion.
Clenching his jaw, he stares right back, actually a little pleased with the segue into what he’d come to talk to Max about in the first place. “You didn’t expect me to just leave the dream like I did,” Alec comments mutedly.
“I didn’t know what it was about,” Max defends, a small crease appearing between her brows. Damn it all, but it’s hard to scowl when she’s being bombarded by the terrible images of Alec in his nightmare. “It was about Dean?”
“I only saw Sam,” Alec admits, unwilling to go into the details but acknowledging that he kind of does have to. “But I commandeered Dix to help me out, and he brought up stuff on Dean, too. A little bit of a buzzkill to find out your likeness is a serial killer whackjob.”
Max releases the tension in her posture. “I’m sorry,” Max says, this time wholly serious. At least Max’s twin had only been as "serial killer whackjob"-y as the rest of Manticore’s experiments were. Dean, on the other hand, is a whole new level of freak for them.
“Forget it. Doesn’t matter.” Silence passes for a few moments, and then Max nods.
“Tell you what,” she says, giving Alec a sly smile. “You help me find Dean, I’ll help you figure out what the deal is with you guys.”
Alec snorts, an obvious refusal. “Try again,” he replies stubbornly. “You’d want to figure out the connection regardless. Why don’t you just get your boy toy to help you out?”
Fed up with the day and really just wanting a shot of something, Alec moves to pass Max again. This time, despite her annoyance with his jab at Logan, she allows him to go by. It’s only until after that she realizes she has to resort to the barest reserves of her ability to beseech.
“Alec, wait,” she calls, and he sighs before turning around, unamused. “Would you please just do this for me?” She shrugs in defeat. “You’re the only person who could help me out.”
As she’d anticipated, Alec’s eyebrows raise in dubiety. “Shameless ass-kissing,” he remarks with absent interest. “Wow, you’re more invested in this than I thought.”
“Come on,” Max says, attempting to keep her frustration at bay. Appealing to someone doesn’t work very well when you get pissed off at them. “You know as well as I do that anyone else from T.C. wouldn’t understand.”
“I don’t understand!”
“And you know that Logan doesn’t have the physicality to chase Dean down, which is what we’d probably end up having to do,” Max continues, ignoring Alec’s outcry, and disliking herself for boldly pointing out Logan’s admittedly very true limitations. His exoskeleton worked miracles, and truthfully, he most likely could prove his worth, but…in this case, Max is still too out of her element without worrying what would happen if Logan met up with Dean (or vice versa, for that matter). No, she’d much rather Logan stay safe in Sandeman’s house. “Please, Alec. He could die.”
Alec’s face is even more upset than before, if it’s possible. “He’s already supposed to be dead, Max,” he says, thinking back to the reports of Monument, Colorado, and the police station explosion. “In what way would I care if the guy goes back to that? I’d really like to just forget this whole thing even happened. Life is up the creek enough without having this horseshit swirling around everything.”
“I thought you said you wanted to get to the bottom of what your nightmare meant,” Max says, feeling a twinge of guilt at exploiting what had obviously been a sickeningly bad ordeal. True to the words, Alec’s expression turns both incredulous and murderous, like he hadn’t expected her to stoop that low. “All I’m saying,” Max hastens, heavily considering taking a step back or two from him, “is that maybe Dean can fill in some of the blanks. Besides, what about the coincidence that your nightmare happened around the same time that Dean appeared? Don’t you think that means something?”
Alec doesn’t respond, just stands there tensely, his fingernails digging into his crossed arms. Max can see him vacillating rapidly between the two options, and she knows, somehow, that for the most part, it’s not the actual rescuing of Dean that’s halting him. Not even the fact that it’s Dean Winchester. More, she would bet her life on, in the vein of Alec being afraid of what he’d find. What his link is to Dean, to Sam, to the both of them.
She knows he hates mysteries, but he hates finding out things that, were this Manticore, would determine him as having some kind of defection or mental deficiency. They both know it’s irrational, and she doubts Alec is aware that she can see what ails him, but it’s still one of Alec’s fears, and Max knows that’s his main misgiving in going to save Dean. Had this been Sam (X5-453, not Sam Winchester, that is), and presuming they hadn’t already met her, Alec would have gone with Max to spring her without question. Mockery, maybe, but not questioning, let alone full-on recalcitrance.
“Even if I did go with you, there’s no way we could find him,” Alec says quietly, his change in demeanor giving Max a whiplash. “He’s probably halfway to Idaho by now.”
Max shakes her head, the idea just now coming to her. “I know the timeframe. We can see if Dix can hack into some satellite imagery, try to track him that way.”
Alec doesn’t answer her, just does that strange visible insecurity again.
“Please, Alec.”
Like the world was just dropped on his shoulders, Alec ducks his head and exhales. “Okay,” he says leadenly.
Max gazes at him for a few more minutes contritely before heading towards Command, ready to ask for Dix’s assistance. She’d usually ask Logan to do this sort of thing—and, truthfully, she had been thinking of it when she’d first proposed the GPS idea—but the whole situation is already fucked up as it is, and adding to what her thoughts were initially about Logan coming with them Alec’s extremely tenuous assent to get Dean back, she doesn’t want to aggravate it. And if there’s anyone who can irritate Alec, it’s Logan.
For all their forced politeness when in the same room together, or even when just the few times they refer to one another, Max knows they’ll always be oil and water. Logan harboring resentment that Alec is, at least biologically, superior in most (if not all) ways to him; not to mention, Alec can touch Max should he choose to, where Logan is unable to do so. Alec harboring resentment that Logan’s…well, Max doesn’t really know why Alec doesn’t like Logan, but he doesn’t nonetheless.
“Okay, so, where would you go if you were being followed?” Max starts up again, attempting to keep her voice as placating as possible. Now that she has Alec’s affiliation, she’s hoping to utilize his and Dean’s potential—probable—similarities. She’s confident she could find Dean alone, but if Alec could narrow down the search parameters, she’s all for that.
Alec’s not so endeared to the idea, but he puts all pride to the wind indeterminably. He also thinks Max’s question is kind of a moot point since he’d really rather not associate himself with Dean Winchester, thank you very much, but he’ll humor her for the time being. He hasn’t been followed often (he was too good at his job for that), but if he can pretend he was and in a not previously encountered situation…
“I’d get to the nearest place I could find that had adequate protection,” says Alec. His sight wanders out the window, and it hits him as hard as when he’d first remembered who the Winchesters were. “Space Needle,” he says with a level of certainty that has no logical roots.
“Alec,” Max says carefully, “are you—”
“I’m sure, Max!” Alec exclaims harshly. “It’s where I’d go.”
“All right,” Max allows. “I trust you.”
It’s the first time Max has actually said the words to Alec, and although he’s primarily surprised, it’s neither the time nor place to psychoanalyze semantics. Taking Alec’s response as gospel (it’s as good a place to start looking as any) and hearing his slow, trudging steps behind her, she walks up the steps to the computer terminals, sitting on the corner of Dix’s desk. He looks up at her through his monocle, confused. “Can you do me a favor?”
Dix looks at Alec covertly, silently asking him if the reason he came with Max—it’s no secret Alec tries to get out of doing any work that someone else can do—is at all because of what Alec had asked Dix to do before. Despite this, Max doesn’t miss the look and, Alec having told her about his previous request for Dix, gripes, “Yes, it has to do with Dean Winchester, now can we move on please?”
Her voice is still low enough to prevent anyone else from overhearing, and though she does doubt that any of those in T.C. would register the name, it’s still a risk she doesn’t want to take. Dix has an expression of the slightest amusement as he replies, “Okay, but I found all the info I could on him. It would take me a while to find any more.”
It’s clear that Dix really would rather not spend another five hours without any guarantee of new knowledge. “We know,” Max says, although she’s still peeved at Alec for not telling her in the first place. “We need you to hack into a satellite feed. The area around the Space Needle starting ninety minutes ago. We’re thinking Dean might’ve headed over there, and need to see where he would’ve gone after.”
Dix immediately gets to work. After a minute or so, he looks up at his two CO’s, still typing. “Am I missing something here?” he asks.
“No.”
“Yes.”
Max glares at Alec as he replies at the same time as she had, but Alec really couldn’t care less. After all, he considers this as having more to do with him than Max. “Max here thinks her new pet has been kidnapped and she wants to get him back home safe and sound,” he elaborates sarcastically.
Frowning, Dix glances between Max and Alec, before saying slowly, “Isn’t Dean Winchester kind of a—”
“—creepy as hell sociopathic murderer and my replica?” Alec finishes. “Yeah. But Maxie chooses to ignore that fact.”
Forecasting a squabble that won’t have anything to do with him, Dix redirects his attention back to accessing satellites. “You agreed to this!” Max objects hotly, proving Dix right. “What is this?”
“Pardon me for not wanting to find a guy who’s supposed to be dead anyway.”
“Could you be any more childish? This isn’t just about you! It could be exposure for all of us, you know.”
“Weak excuse. Who’s to say he isn’t faking? Maybe he killed Sam!”
“Yeah, right. Sounds just like him.”
“Guys.”
“Why do you like this dude so much? How is he any better than me?”
“Stop whining, Alec.”
“Guys?”
“If he kills us all, don’t come crying to me!”
“First of all, I’d never go crying to you. Second of all, if we were all killed, I wouldn’t even be able to.”
“Technicality.”
“Guys!”
“WHAT?”
Max and Alec both turn back to Dix, wearing identical faces of irritation and vehemence. Dix oddly doesn’t see much actual anger—mainly just impassion—but if Dean—holy crap, that is so crazy to think of what Dix is doing for his leaders—but he gestures to his computer screen. “I found a feedback. Looks like your motorcycle arrived there about an hour ago.”
“Yeah, dude stole it,” Alec snipes, now only goading, considering he truly has no moral problems about stealing. “Stand-up guy, really.”
“Shut up, Alec.”
“It looks like he went to the top and—” Dix pauses, looking closer at the screen. “Two guys went up after him. Something happened up there; apparently he lost a fight or something,” Dix continues, getting a bad feeling. “It’s kind of hard to see because of the weather, but around fifteen minutes later, a black car drives away. License plate 450-K something.”
Max leans down to peer at the images Dix had brought up. She notices Dean had hid her bike underneath a piece of sheet metal, and she’s glad he didn’t do something worse to it. She’d have to clean it up thoroughly and check for scratches and whatnot, but at least it isn’t lying in a ditch somewhere. She’s trying to keep her mind off the whirling maelstrom of bad things that could have happened to Dean. Mainly concerning who would have wanted to take Dean. And why.
“Can you tell where the car went?” Alec asks, finally piping up with something useful. But Max looks at his pinched face, and knows he’s thinking along the same lines as she.
Dix shakes his head regrettably. “Sorry,” he answers. “The satellite cuts out. Best I can tell you is the direction.”
Max doesn’t know what to do with the shoddy information, but after taking only a fleeting glimpse of the video, Alec hops down the stairs and over to a table covered with papers. Shuffling through them, he comes up with a large and detailed map of the city. Max follows, and stares down. She’d ask what he’s doing, but one look at his face full of concentration, and she stays silent.
“Where did you say you lost him from?” Alec asks pragmatically, and Max, choosing to brush off his maybe-unintentional jab, wordlessly points at where the warehouse had been. Alec runs his finger along some streets until he gets to Seattle’s central monument. Obviously doing rapid-fire computations in his head, Alec then moves his finger in a broad, but not impossibly so, circle.
“They’re going to be within this diameter,” he continues assuredly. “I don’t know if they would’ve stopped before getting out of it or if they’re still driving, but they couldn’t have gotten farther than here” Alec prods his finger at a spot close to Penn Cove, “based on the time and speed range they may have been going.”
“Who do you think took him?” Max asks, aiming for withholding any fear, but not quite succeeding. Alec stares at her hard for a few seconds, silently telling her his best guess. “Why would White want him?” she says quietly, her voice between hate and dread.
“I don’t know,” Alec answers ruefully. “But if it is White, we’d need to look for an abandoned bunker or something similar. He’d go for massive, but not flashy. Considering his captive of choice, my guess is that he’d go for some kind of torture, which would mean he’d most likely need access to lab equipment.”
Max stares at Alec for a few moments, before briefly touching his shoulder in gratitude despite the dire circumstances, and then heading back over to Dix to tell him what Alec had deduced, after which she proceeds to pace agitatedly. For his part, Alec merely sits down at the table, concentrating on the map as if Dean’s route were in motion, Max’s motorcycle with him behind the handlebars, dodging White through the streets, ending up at the Space Needle and then disappearing with whatever crony White had commissioned. Alec doesn’t know why White would want to go after Dean—or, for that matter, how White had even found Dean—but it’s not Alec’s job to figure that out. He’s only being commissioned for the rescue and return part of it. He doesn’t have any additional plans to be involved. It’s all way beyond his pay grade.
Seven very tense minutes later, Dix makes a noise of triumph. “I think I got something!” the transhuman exclaims. As Max and Alec hasten over, Max shushes him in continued fear of others overhearing. They both look over Dix’s shoulder, peering at the GPS image. Dix points to a gray building in the middle of what was probably a state park years before. “It’s the only building that resembles a bunker in the area Alec said.”
“Where is it?” asks Alec, trying to triangulate the location but not having much luck.
“Forty miles northeast of here,” Dix answers. “I’ll give you the coordinates.”
“Super. Won’t be much more’n twenty-five,” Alec comments, grinning at the fact that because of Max’s concern over Dean, he’d be able to go all out speed-wise.
Max, a little regrettably, has to object. “We can’t drive there,” she says. Alec snaps his head over to her, outraged. “It’ll draw commotion. We’ll have to stay to the side streets, and then that forest by the bunker.”
“Wait, you want us to hike forty fucking miles over to this place?” Alec confirms hotly. “I did not sign up for this.”
Max levels a glare at him, to which he promptly pays no mind. “Oh, please, you know we can run full out for more than that,” she chides.
“Doesn’t mean I want to!” Alec complains, looking again at the GPS as if it will suddenly change the coordinates to closer to Terminal City. “Think of all the time we’d save driving.”
“Yeah, think of all the attention we’ll get when White and the Familiars hear us coming,” Max retorts back. In the resolute expression that only Max can possess, she says with finalizing decree, “White won’t kill Dean between now and the time we get there. We’re locked and loaded in three, Alec.”
Alec gapes for more than a few seconds, during which Max rolls her eyes and hurries off, presumably to fortify herself with her customary jacket, perhaps squeeze out the water from her clothes and change shoes (not that Terminal City is exactly a mall, but Max is reasonably sure she can rummage up something dry).
Feeling Dix’s galled, half-amused gaze, Alec narrows his eyes. “Say nothing,” he says curtly.
Stomping off, Alec beelines straight for the armory, fully intending to outfit himself with every weapon he can fit on his person. Manticore made sure their soldiers knew every possible hold for a weapon, and Alec aced that part of training. Hell, he knows how to pass a government frisking. Really, really not wanting to go through with this plan and wishing his conscience would let him leave Dean in White’s clutches to die a horrible death, Alec snatches up a nine-mil, then moves on to knives.
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