Archive of Our Own

It’s been awhile since Alec’s run into another transgenic. Few years, at least. It takes him by surprise, but he’s not completely unprepared. Hunted as he is, he can’t afford to be.

Three pistols and a knife in easy reach, the shotgun he took from a farmer who caught him squatting in his barn last year tucked under the mattress, and Alec’s up with a weapon in hand before his intruder can blink.

It’s dark and drafty, hard rain rattling the windows. His shirt’s all the way across the room and he instantly misses his warm nest of blankets. The orange glow of streetlamps filters in to cast watery shadows across the intruder’s form, but Alec can see him clear as day and there’s no mistaking that face.

Weapons and reaction time aside, nothing could have fully prepared him for coming face to face with a zombie.

"You’re dead," Alec says, allowing himself a half-second to adjust to the universe's newest anarchy.

"Manticore doesn’t accept failure," is what the undead intruder comes back with. He's caked in dirt, dripping rainwater all over the floor, ugly fraying beanie cap swallowing the top of his head, and his knuckles are bleeding. His features are more hardened than Alec’s, and he's thinner, too. He smells like pine and roadkill.

Alec keeps the gun steady, eyes flicking to the half-open window. This confrontation is all very jarring and what-the-fuck, but all he can think is that if anyone saw Ben climbing in, they’re both screwed. He's six floors up and there's no fire escape out there.

"Being dead’s kind of an irreversible failure," he tries, stalling so he can get his head on straight. He's not sure this isn't some kind of conscience-purging nightmare, even if he stopped having those a while ago.

"They tortured me until I wasn’t anymore. ‘Experimenting’ was actually what they called it, but you know how that goes." Ben shrugs, trying for casual, like this is all normal, being a dead guy looking up his genetic copy as easy as finding a listing in the yellow pages. But there’s a rigidity in his posture Alec is intimately familiar with. Bad memories all around, and no thank you.

"Manticore went up in smoke years ago," says Alec. "Where the hell have you been?"

"You know the drill. Escape and evade."

Yeah, Alec knows the drill. He’s only lived it for the past half-decade, and where the hell was Ben when they were front and center on the news every day? Psychosis or not, they could’ve used some help. Alec could have used— "You didn’t come back."

"I couldn’t risk it."

"Get out."

Ben loses the smirk, the tiny spark in his eyes smothered out. "I just got here."

"You’re crazy. Crazy people aren’t invited. Go look up Max, I’m sure she’d love to hear from you."

Ben frowns. "She killed me."

Alec bites his lip. He shouldn’t have brought her into it, now that he’s thinking about it. She may have spoken fondly of her brother and wallowed in a shit-ton of guilt over his death, but she’s sure to have a few choice words for him if Ben—alive and probably still whacked right out of his serial-killing gourd—actually catches up with her. "She told me."

Ben nods, like he knew already. "I returned the favor."

"What?" It’s not a question, more I dare you to repeat that so I can blast you full of holes, but Ben doesn’t seem to be interpreting the warning quite right.

"She’s dead," Ben says again, like he thinks Alec's genuinely hard of hearing.

Alec feels something crucial to his survival snapping loose inside, the beginnings of an unraveling, but there's nothing he can do about it unless Ben takes it back. His finger goes tight on the trigger. He can pick up the sound of his knuckles creaking, even over the raging pulse in his ears. "That what you’re here for? Gonna sacrifice me to your bloodthirsty Lady next? ‘Cause I got a few bullets that’re gonna have something to say about that."

"She was done," Ben explains, not taking it back at all, making it so much worse, and he doesn’t look amused or any kind of casual anymore. He looks just like Alec feels. Alec aches to shoot him, right between the eyes. "All that running and hiding. She was glad I came. Funny. She thought the world had gotten too big and scary for me, back then, but when I found her?" Ben shakes his head, and Alec’s eyes burn, his steady aim not so steady now. Screw shooting him. Alec should beat him to death, painful and messy. "When I found her, she was squatting in a dead man’s house, some guy she had to take out ‘cause he spotted her leaping a fence. Our fearless Maxie was starving to death because she didn’t wanna have to kill anyone else just to get more food."

"Shut up." Alec’s done listening.

But Ben’s not done talking. "You know what she said to me? She said: 'They made me out to be a monster, and then I had to turn into one.'"

"Five seconds."

"I’m not here to kill you," says Ben, and now he looks scared. He should be, even if Alec knows he’s not the thing Ben fears.

"Four."

"I’ve been looking for you forever, and you’re just gonna--"

"Three." Alec cocks the gun.

Ben takes a careful step back toward the window. "I did this wrong."

"Two."

"Fine," Ben snaps, eyes gone cold and hard, throws the pane up and dives out headfirst over the ledge, swift and soundless.

Alec blows out a shaky breath and lets the wobble in his knees take over, ass colliding hard with the lumpy mattress. Gut twisting, he pinches himself and bites his lip and blinks fast.

He doesn't wake up.

-:-

Max is dead and Ben isn’t: two new facts like rusted blades going to town on his insides. Just when Alec thinks the world can’t get any more fucked up, it rises to the challenge.

Alec's having a hard time hanging onto his surprise, though, more pissed at himself than anything. He remembers robo-Zack all too well, should've guessed sooner that Manticore wouldn't give up on another multimillion dollar investment just because its brains got a little scrambled, and he idly wonders if Ben got any shiny, indestructible parts to go with his lunacy. He's probably out there hunting some poor schmuck right now, some family man with a wife and two-point-five kids and a blatant thirst for shedding transgenic blood. Alec should have planted a bullet in Ben's brain, quick and clean, should feel more guilty that he loosed him back on the city. He should've avenged Max's death, at the very least. She deserved that much.

It's entirely too tender, that place in his memory where she lives. Poking at it brings nothing good, and Alec's no masochist. There’s no sense dissecting any of these things now, anyway, nothing he can do to change it, so he splashes his face in the sink and kicks the useless clutter out of his head.

The apartment’s not anything special—a gutted, abandoned place with wires creeping out of the walls, carpet and baseboards and fixtures all ripped out—but Alec was hoping for the luxury of calling it home for at least a week or two. Wasn’t easy dragging that dumpster-salvaged mattress up six flights of stairs without calling attention.

He can’t stay now, though. Ben may be an X5 but he’s nuttier than squirrel shit and who knows how much of his stealth training is tangled up in the madness twisting his brain all out of shape. Alec heard him coming in, and with that level of carelessness Ben might as well have been flashing neon lights around the place. Besides, Alec’s not eager to have another run-in. Ben knows where to find him and that doesn’t sit well at all.

He’s packed in under four minutes, pulls on a couple of shirts and a hoodie, leather jacket over it all. He’ll be sweating like a pig before he gets outside, but a guy wandering around in the cold with too few layers commands instant suspicion and lots of it.

Outside, Alec finds a beat-up old Pontiac and hotwires it easy. It’s the least conspicuous one, free of graffiti and an alarm. He tosses his duffel and blankets into the passenger’s seat, shotgun on top, and hightails it out of there. There's no fuss out on the street right now, but that doesn’t mean anything. People have gotten sneakier about forming their lynch mobs, and Alec’s keen to be in the wind before they get that far.

Newly restored high-rises are stacked along the horizon: jagged, monstrous things poking at the sky, starbursts of artificial light running up the sides like connect-the-dots. Rain blurs the windshield, and Alec thinks he’s done with cities for a while. Chicago is nothing like Seattle and yet everything like it at the same time. It’s big and important and full of easy marks and cubbyholes that are only a stone’s throw from places that can be ransacked for food, and it’s familiar for all of that. Still, he knows it was ridiculous to ever come here. Everything is so packed-in, people living on top of each other. It’s easy to get lost in places like this but it’s more dangerous too. The US government’s spent the last few years getting its shit together again: more reliable Internet, a resurrection of imports and exports, an all-around mend in the broken economy. Alec doesn’t want to be caught in any Ordinary-choked metropolis the day they install heat scanners in every doorway. The open countryside’s better.

He drives around for a while, scouting and planning and leaving absolutely no room in his head for anything else, but it turns out all the denial and aggressive apathy in the world can't keep that dreadfully familiar something inside him from unwinding just a little bit more. There's nothing but a whole mess of trouble waiting to ruin all his hard-won mental tidiness if he lets it go on, so Alec has to waste precious minutes stomping on it until it quits, and he's left with jangled nerves and sweaty hands by the time it's done.

But it is done, just a brief relapse. He's over it.

There’s a pack of Winstons in the glove box, crumpled and half full. Alec lets out a shaky sigh and chain smokes until he pulls into a Citgo, rubbing at his eyes until they’re red and puffy. He flips his hood up and hunches his shoulders, sniffling wetly when he walks inside. The harsh lighting does him a favor, his distorted reflection in the cooler’s glass verifying he looks like shit, and he checks his wallet as he browses.

He'll need to score some more cash soon. Getting out of the city’s going to take a few days, if he’s lucky. There are checkpoints all over the place, and he’ll have to ditch the car to get around them.

Alec grabs some snacks and a cheap roll of cough drops, lets out a miserable, hacking cough when he walks up to the register. A set of posters are plastered on the back wall, lined up neatly side-by-side underneath the cigarette display. MONSTERS AMONG US! the first one says, a list of tips for taking a freak down, a phone number and promises of a reward—DEAD OR ALIVE—in bold print across the bottom. It’s old and faded.

He coughs again, and the cashier doesn’t even look up from his Enquirer as he scans the items. Transgenics don’t get sick; that's common knowledge now.

"Thirty-one fifty," the cashier says distractedly, flips a page and keeps reading.

Paying that much for a handful of goods physically hurts, but Alec forks over the money. His eyes light on the drawer when it zings open, all that crumpled cash stacked so high the cashier has to put some elbow grease into cramming Alec's contribution in there, and the ache in Alec's gut combined with the skin-warmed metal tucked at his back is giving him all kinds of reckless ideas.

He looks around.

There's a kid in the store, filthy denim jacket and faded red sneakers, hair cut too short and his unprotected ears glowing bright red at the tips. He's inspecting the candy bars and checking the prices with an intensity usually reserved for penny-pinching old ladies. Can't be more than seven or eight, not old enough to be out alone at this hour. His fingernails are filthy and he's too thin.

Alec accepts his change and keeps his gun in his pants, heading for the door, but he suffers a moment of hesitation when his eyes fall on the kid again. He's seen and walked past bigger charity cases without a single hitch in his step, and he doesn't let himself think about why he doesn't this time.

"This is the one you want," he says, startling the kid when he stops beside him.

The kid flinches away and looks up, wary eyes and a scowl. Should've made more noise; Alec forgets that sometimes.

The obnoxious bell over the door jangles, and Alec's careful not to look around in paranoia. He tries for a carefree smirk and maybe fails a little bit, holding out a package of Reese's and a five dollar bill.

The kid's smart enough not to trust it, so Alec lays the money and candy down on the rack, remembers to sniffle and cough some more when he turns to leave.

"Nobody move!" a voice shouts, strained with fear, and Alec freezes just shy of the door. "Down on the ground!"

"Oh, come on," Alec groans under his breath, but drops to his knees and sneaks a glance over his shoulder.

Another kid, older and rougher, is waving a hand canon around, and it's goddamn fucking annoying when someone steals Alec's stupid ideas right out from under him. Guy couldn't have waited ten more seconds so he wouldn't have to watch?

"Not you!" the robber barks at the cashier when he tries to hide behind the counter, throws an empty backpack across. "Everything in the register! Now! Move!"

The cashier's got silver hair and liver-spotted hands, shaking like a dried-up leaf about to crumble apart in the wind. He fumbles around, filling the bag and dropping change all over the floor, pulse at his throat jumping so erratically Alec can practically hear the heart attack coming on.

"Hurry the fuck up!" the robber snaps, eyes bulging just as wide as they can go. He spots the candy-shopping boy trying to crawl out the opposite door. "Kid!"

The boy stops dead, and the gun-wielding moron walks over to haul him up by the arm. He shoves him at Alec. "Try anything else, and I'll bust a cap in your little ass, got me?"

Nodding jerkily, the boy stutters out an apology and shrinks back against Alec. Alec can't help the flinch. He avoids contact at all costs—the fever-warmth of his skin is just another giveaway—and it's jarring to have another body jammed up in his personal space.

"Stupid old motherfucker!" the robber shouts when the cashier drops the bag, bills scattering. "You want me to blow your fucking brains out? Is that it? Pick it up!"

The cashier falls down on creaking joints and promptly scrambles to gather it all back up. "I'm sorry, oh god, sorry! Almost done, don't shoot me, please, just don't shoot me!"

Alec is beyond irritated at this point. There's no way he's getting out of this without having to flee the scene before the cops show, possibly with a few dead bodies behind him. They'll check the witnesses for barcodes—they check everyone they have to make eye contact with these days—and if he runs before they get here, it won't be much better. Let it happen, stop it: any scenario he plays out in his head ends with him expending too much effort and energy. He might as well make it worth his while.

"Hey, it's okay," he tells the boy, nudges him aside gently and catches his gaze. "I'm not here to hurt anybody, okay?"

The boy looks at him like he thinks Alec's got a few screws loose. The guy with the gun is clearly the one to be afraid of, not some cash-gifting dude with the plague.

"Soon as I move, hit that door and don't look back."

The boy shakes his head, eyes bulging. "Don't be stupid!" he hisses, but Alec just winks.

In the next instant, the robber's out cold on the floor, Alec standing over him with his newly confiscated pistol trained on the cashier. The cashier's taken advantage of the distraction to remember he has a shotgun under the counter, and he's aiming it right at Alec's head. The boy has not yet fled, frozen to the spot.

"I don't want to," says Alec, aim a hell of a lot steadier than the geriatric guy gaping at him. "Don't make me."

The cashier seems to snap out of his stupor, then, firms his grip. "You think I'm gonna stand still so you can peel the flesh from my bones, you better think again, freak!"

Alec rolls his eyes. There's no reasoning with these people, he doesn't even know why he bothers. He blurs out of the line of fire and over the counter, conks the guy on the head before his spent shotgun shell hits the tile.

"Told you to run away," Alec says to the boy, who's still inanimate with fear. Shaking his head, Alec scoops up the dropped bag of money and collects his purchases. "You can be here when the cops show to tell 'em all about the scary monster, or you can grab as much food as your scrawny arms can carry and make yourself scarce. Anything missing, they'll just blame on me," he advises, backing out the door.

The boy says nothing, and Alec gets gone.

Back in the car, he heads south until a checkpoint gets in his way, veers off and leaves the Pontiac in a random parking lot. He transfers his spoils from the store to his own bag, then hikes as far northeast as he can go before he hits water. The rain tapers off just before the leaden sky glows pearly with the first hints of sunrise, early risers trickling out. It’s early winter; snow will be blowing down within the next few weeks.

Losing himself in one of the warehouse districts, Alec finds an old place by the docks with all its windows smashed out and hunkers down in one of the second-floor offices. The wind howls its way inside but he doesn’t spare a blanket to block it off, changes out of his wet clothes and counts the money. Nearly three hundred.

Maybe he'll try for Canada, he thinks, but changes his mind the next second. If those rumors of a safe haven for freaks have any truth to them then he doesn't want to risk it. Maybe he'd see a friendly face again, or maybe he'd find out they're all dead—"They made me out to be a monster, and then I had to turn into one."—or as good as. Better to just get clear of the city and follow the road until it hits nowhere.

Bundling himself in blankets, Alec uses his duffel for a pillow and keeps one hand tucked inside, wrapped around his newest pistol.

-:-

From Manticore to Terminal City, and they were still caged. They could leave, sure, sneak out into the world for supplies, but if they were caught they were dead.

It was open season on transgenics after all those conspiracy reports White had cooked up—those stunts he pulled with Annie and the Jam Pony fiasco had stirred up too much paranoia for him not to take advantage and expand on it. Transgenics were credited with high profile assassinations, school shootings, livestock mutilation, the works. Any crime bloody enough where the culprit got away clean, and the finger was automatically wagging their way. Didn’t matter what their human supporters said or tried; they ended up getting lumped into the target pool if they kept on protesting long enough. Eyes Only was more hunted than ever.

Civilians were worse than the cops by a mile—more of what happened to Biggs going on in spades. They caught the barest glimpse of ink on anyone’s neck and they’d mow the freak down in the streets with a motor-cart, or bash his head in with a broomstick, whatever was handy. Judges didn’t bat an eye, if it even made it as far as a courtroom. The offender usually ended up getting a medal out of the deal.

Max had a tendency to be a bitch when it came to anything Alec-related, never tried very hard to kick the habit, and it wasn’t like Alec did much to discourage it. But she gave him a place, a purpose, more chances than he deserved, and that smoothed over cracks Alec didn’t even know he had back then. And she tried where it mattered.

We’re not giving up, she’d say every time Alec proposed leaving TC. We can still fight this. Fix it.

They had nowhere to go, anyway. It’d be the same story, new venue, she insisted, wouldn’t hear Alec’s defense that they were bred for this very thing: to fight, acclimate, survive. They’d be safer if they spread out.

Max was too stubborn and idealistic, though. Even after Logan was finally caught and killed she wouldn’t budge. She refused to let their losses be for nothing. She held out hope until the very end.

But the government wasn’t much for peace talks where a bunch of psychotic freaks were concerned, wanted the mess swept under the rug for good and for keeps, and it was only a matter of time before the lines were crossed.

They weren’t just crossed, though. They were detonated.

They lost over half their number, buried in fire and rubble. Blood running down her arms and ash smearing her face, Max told the survivors to scatter, so they did. No questions. They all knew where it was headed, where it had already gone.

Kill or be killed, every freak for himself.

That was five years ago.

-:-

Something smacks him in the face and Alec snaps upright, barrel of his gun jammed tight against his visitor's forehead before what turns out to be a jacket is even finished sliding off his head. White daylight hits him square in the eyes, and he squints against it.

"We have to go," Ben says. He's crouched not a foot away, doesn't appear to care if Alec blows his brains out or not, which is just another reason Alec should. "Brilliant stunt you pulled last night. Our face is all over the news."

"How'd you find me?" Alec asks. He left witnesses at the store, so that announcement isn't exactly shocking. Other things have been bothering him more, despite all his not thinking. "How'd you even know about me? Was it Max?"

Ben swats the gun away, and Alec doesn't bother raising it again, scowls instead. "Max got pissed when I asked about you. She wouldn't tell me anything." Ben frowns, like he doesn't understand why in the world his search for Alec might alarm anyone. He picks up Alec's jacket and pushes it at him again. "I ran into an X6 a few years ago. Called himself Dalton. He thought I was you."

"You kill him, too?"

Ben stands, looks at Alec like he's the crazy one. "Why would I?"

Alec doesn't dignify that with a response. You don't explain things to crazy people. They already have all the explanations they'll ever want, and trying to inject sane-person logic into their way of thinking only gets you in trouble. Alec's had enough experience lately.

He pushes up and dresses swiftly, casting sidelong glances at his twin. Buoys clang off the water, dock workers grunting and stomping and cussing, rank polluted smell in the air. Ben's standing at the window, watching over it all while he waits for Alec to finish. He's cleaner today: no grit, new clothes that hang too loosely on his frame, but he’s still wearing the hat, pulled down too low like he wants to disappear into it. The morning light cuts sharp angles across his face, skin taut and bone-pale, and his eyes are darker than Alec's ever were, even at his lowest. Ben may still function well enough to remember about showers but he won't survive on his own much longer. Killing him would be a mercy.

"You know there's something wrong with you, don't you?"

"With me?" Alec says, brows jumping high. "Are you fucking serious?"

Ben turns, head cocked in appraisal. "You walked into a store to buy food, like it was normal. Like it's your right."

"It is." Alec buttons up his pants and shoves his feet into his boots.

"It's not. It was stupid. You could've been killed. Then you went and let everyone live to tell the tale so they could try to kill you again." Ben's getting a little worked up about it, fists clenched and his chest heaving, but Alec doesn't care if he flies right off the handle at this point. It's not his business.

"You know what?" Alec stuffs his clothes into his duffel and starts rolling up his blankets. "I've been getting by just fine, so save it. You wanna dig around in the trash for your next meal, that's your choice. Just because they treat us like rabid dogs doesn't mean we have to live like 'em. Sorry I got you in deep shit, but that's what you get for wearing my face."

Ben twists his mouth up in irritation. "It was my face first."

"Yeah, but then you died and it was all mine. Just 'cause you wouldn't stay that way doesn't mean you can have it back. Here." Alec stands again, duffel slung over his shoulder, and tosses a bag of chips and a soda over. Ben catches them. "Try something that hasn't been spit out of someone's else's mouth. Enjoy."

"You're leaving?"

"We're wanted, remember? You woke me up just now and told me about it." It's not the answer to Ben's real question, but Alec feels like being a smart-ass right now. He hasn't had the cause to exercise that side of himself in a long while.

Ben just looks at him, from violently annoyed to open and pleading in a beat flat.

Alec turns and walks away, pauses in the threshold and, without looking back, says, "I see you again, Ben, it's gonna get ugly."

Taking the stairs two at a time, Alec thinks it would've been better if it was Max who'd betrayed his existence to Ben. Hating her for any legitimate reason at all would make things easier.

-:-

With a confirmed transgenic in the city, everyone's on high alert. Trying to sneak through a checkpoint now is a lost cause, so Alec takes to the sewers.

They send regular patrols underground (monsters like their dank, dark shitholes, it's just common sense) but being caught in a crowd of Ordinaries topside would be much, much worse, and the cops are easy enough to avoid down here. The way things echo off the pipes, he can hear military-issue boots a mile off, and he can see better in the dark than they can. That's always handy.

He could do without his heightened sense of smell right now, though.

He's been down here maybe an hour, creeping through the squishy muck as stealthily as he knows how, when he picks up movement that's not him, and hushed voices.

"Shhh, shhh! C'mon, just a little further."

Alec goes still. He's at a T-junction, no openings nearby that would let him back onto the street, and the pipes snaking along the ceiling aren't sturdy enough to cling to until the danger passes. Opening fire down here would be a monumentally bad idea. He'll have to fight.

He presses his back to the slimy wall, waits and listens. It's not another five minutes before he sees what he's up against: a tight cluster of shadows all shuffling along together, a little clumsily, and only one of them's tall enough to be considered a threat by most people. The rest are low to the ground and tiny. Alec's not most people, though, and he knows a group of miniature assassins when he sees them. Looks like his little stunt has flushed some transgenics out of the woodwork.

He feels a flash of that same unwanted relief that Ben brought, the comfort of being with his own kind, and the irritation, too. An old responsibility he shed a long time ago rearing up to demand he lend a hand—it's partially his fault that things are like this now, and completely his fault that the city's released the hounds. The least he can do is help them find a new safehouse. Inconvenient as all hell, but still the least he can do. It's not like he has to stick around after.

When he steps out into the open, though, the X-6 ushering the group has other ideas. She takes one look at him and pops him right in the eye.

"Ow! What the fuck?" The left side of his face flares bright and throbs. It's been forever since he took a hit from someone who can actually do any real damage. Damn, he misses it, except that he really, really doesn't.

"You!" she hisses, and swings again. "You asshole!"

Alec's ready for it this time, catching her fist before she can take out his other eye. "Hey, c'mon! Do you punch everyone who tries to help you in the face? Jesus."

She yanks her arm out of his grip and, oh man, if looks could kill. The kids huddled around her are glaring at him, too, lips curled up and their eyes shining with what promises to be hell on his ankles if he makes one more wrong move. None of their faces are familiar to him, not from TC. Probably some of the few refugees smart enough to make tracks as soon as Manticore burned down, instead of sticking around to live in the oppressed spotlight.

"Think you've helped enough," the X-6 growls, edges her group past him and hurries them along the corridor until they're out of sight again. "Thanks for stirring the pot, dipshit," she calls out of the dark, and Alec sighs.

Whether she's talking about Seattle or Alec's latest clusterfuck doesn't make much difference.

He kicks at the wall. Grits his teeth and moves on.

It's a bad day. Bad to the bone and rotten to its core.

It takes mere hours for the city to go from a kind of organized alarm, to rioting panic and back-alley witch trials.

At first, it's just the cops out in force, combing over the city grid by grid, knocking on doors and politely requesting permission to search homes and businesses in case the culprit somehow found his way into their basement or walk-in freezer, each section locked down and heavily guarded once it's cleared. News anchors are, of course, spewing fresh, hyperbolic nonsense every twenty minutes and not exactly concerned with keeping the peace, but, while civilians are wary, opting for safety in numbers and more careful about where they step until the situation's resolved, they ultimately go about business as usual.

The search eventually serves its purpose, though, and more transgenics are driven out into the harsh light of the morning news, shot down in the streets like dogs and dragged away. At the revelation that there's more than one renegade monster in the city, the panic level rises, but it doesn't explode just yet.

The official turn of the paranoid tide comes right about the time some random onlooker identifies one of the bodies as "that guy who worked at the coffee shop on 9th and gave me a free donut every morning!" and suddenly the possibilities are terrifying and endless.

The difference between what happened in Seattle when skeletons first came pouring out of Manticore's many closets, and now, is that people are so confident their brutal, zero-tolerance policies and new self-defense laws have effectively rid any and all transgenics of their spines. The freaks wouldn't dare try to fit in now, driven into caves and ratholes like any mutant with half a brain should be, and it's that confidence that has made it so easy for Alec to get by for weeks at a time without resorting to freighthopping or gunfights. When it turns out that the monsters are bolder than people gave them credit for, people get restless, then unruly, and then they start dying.

There's rampant fingerpointing, lynch mobs and riots, and the cops immediately shed any pretense of good manners to get things back under control. There's no denying a few cornered freaks lash out and do their fair share of damage but, by lunchtime, more people are killed by people than by any transgenic.

Not that the facts will actually matter when all's said and done.

Each snatch of a radio report or television screen has Alec flinching, but it's an ingrained reaction he can't afford to let himself really feel. He had to give up on the sewers once it became clear too many other transgenics and cops had the same idea: too many bodies and firearms down there. He did his best to encourage who he could in the right direction but, given his face is so popular right now, he didn't get very far. He headed back to the surface, hood flipped up and conspicuous as hell, so maybe it's better none of them came with him.

He darts from bolthole to bolthole, making his way south again, towards Steelhead territory. The citizens down that way are better armed, sure, and it's not like they'll be on his side if it comes to a standoff, but their tendency to throw a wrench in the authorities' works, just on principle, improves his odds enough to make the risk worth it. That, and the southernmost checkpoints are pretty much a joke, no sense trying for anything more complicated on a day when his luck only comes in one, shitty flavor.

Another failed attempt just to get clear of downtown and that plan's starting to look more and more like a pipe dream. He's been stuck here for hours; the cops are a freaking nightmare.

At the approach of static-blurred voices, Alec ducks down an alley and tosses himself into the first dumpster he sees. The cop doesn't falter, the crackling stream of his police radio flowing right on by without a hitch. Even if he had any reason to suspect the alley, he'd be pretty well distracted by the commotion that erupts nearby, boots clomping off toward the panicked shouts in a hurry.

"Damn it," Alec breathes, really wishing he hadn't been around to hear that—all these years spent whittling his emotions down to nothing and he still hasn't been able to do much about his curiosity.

He flips the lid up and hops out, tightening the straps on his pack before scaling a fire escape to the roof of the nearest building. The sky's bloated with gray clouds, threatening more rain and darkening the edges of the rooftop enough that Alec feels confident peeking over the side to see what all the fuss is about.

It's going down right in the middle of an intersection, cars idling at haphazard angles, some honking, some with the doors left carelessly open while the drivers wander into the gathering crowd to watch the spectacle. There are a few cops there, raised weapons encouraging a pair of transhumans and three transgenics to stay put, but for the most part, they're just watching and jeering while civilians do all the dirty work. There's one transgenic sprawled lifelessly on the ground already, neat hole in the center of her forehead. Seems that method's not good enough anymore, though, because a handful of civilians are bringing gas cans in.

There's a familiar face down there, too, in the middle of the transgenic huddle, little teeth bared and his dirty red sneakers darting back and forth, anxious lunges at the people tossing gasoline on him. A teenage girl tries to wrangle him behind her but he's too worked up, probably from too many guns pointed at his head in one day.

It's the kid from the store, and how the hell had Alec not caught onto that earlier?

Someone starts fumbling around with a matchbook.

"Shit." Alec is on his feet and halfway over the ledge before he catches himself.

He can't.

He wants to help but he's survived on his own long enough to have developed a secondary stop-and-think reaction that usually kicks in before he can do anything too stupid. The specifics of how it went from quick-and-clean kill shots to gleeful cruelty, Alec doesn't know, but he's been unwilling witness to enough public executions by now to hazard a guess. Get enough humans together and give them a common enemy, and it doesn't take long for them to get sadistically creative. He stops and he thinks about this, about all the painful, painful ways helping will surely get him killed, and then he goes ahead and does the stupid thing anyway.

There are certain things he's prepared to live with, and sitting idly by while a deranged mob sets his people on fire isn't one of them.

While it costs him more seconds than he'd like, enough time for a match to strike and fall on the corpse, all that thinking isn't completely useless. Instead of throwing himself off the roof and down in the center of everything only to get his ass shot full of holes, he puts the small arsenal in his bag to good use. Crouches and takes aim, dropping all six cops where they stand.

He's only firing tranqs but the civilians down there don't know that, and promptly freak the fuck out, pushing and running and scanning the area frantically for the source of gunfire. The transgenics waste no time lunging for the nearest fallen cop to snag their weapons and turn them on anyone brave enough to still be hanging around.

And that's it, mission accomplished; Alec can safely say he did his part for his people and move on.

Except the fire is complicating things, eating up the corpse and racing along trails of spilled gasoline to block off convenient escape routes, and he knows it won't be long before the fire department and about a hundred more cops show up to pass ruthless judgment on the freaks trapped down there with a half-dozen unconscious police officers. Some civilians find themselves trapped, too, burning and screaming, and despite the fact that he's waving an automatic weapon at another group of stubborn assholes hellbent on throwing lighters at him, one of the transhumans does his damnedest to try and mime at people to stop, drop, and roll. It's about all he can do, given his clothes are soaked in accelerant and he has to take extra care avoiding the flames.

Alec can't help but think of Joshua. This guy's entirely too short and scaly to look anything like him, but the way he moves to protect his friends while unable to hold enough of a grudge against his tormentors to wish them fiery deaths is all it really takes. The pang of grief on top of the smell of burning flesh and smoke inhalation upsets Alec's breathing.

He chokes out a long-suffering sigh and takes a wide step into thin air.

Down on the ground, everything is louder, more urgent. Bodies are flying every which way, under their own power or being dragged along under someone else's—obstacles and potential casualties, every last one of them. It's like falling back in time. He’s been here before and the flashback is not doing great things for him.

As soon as Alec straightens up from his landing, someone starts firing a weapon and it jars him far enough out of those memories to let him be useful as is immediate priority shifts.

He spots a uniformed arm waving around behind the dizzying flash of police lights, taking cover behind the car and blindly shooting out into the intersection. It’s another cop. Must've been taking a leak or buying a donut and came back to find a different kind of mayhem than he was expecting, because Alec didn't miss, he's not that reckless. This guy wasn't here before, and now he is, and underneath the screaming and the shots and the roar of flames and the pounding of his own heart as he runs like hell, Alec can hear more of that goddamned radio static. The last thing they need is an army of more cops storming out here in riot mode.

Alec makes a circuit of the car and slides up from behind, smooth and silent. The cop is sitting with his legs sprawled in front of him, preoccupied with yelling for backup and shooting at the slightest provocation. When Alec gets him in a stranglehold and the barrel of that gun swings up toward his face, breaking the cop's neck comes easier than anything else Alec's had to do today.

He smashes the radio and moves on, nothing else he can do about it.

He makes it back out to where the fire is raging, and it appears at first glance that all the transgenics are still there, those who are free to move refusing to leave the others behind. Our problem in a nutshell, Alec thinks, quickly looking around.

He sees a flicker of reflective orange about a block or so down, and heads for it. Where there's construction, there's dirt, and, even better, a city pickup truck. Hotwiring the truck is the work of seconds, but plowing through the abandoned cars takes a little longer. As soon as he's able, Alec spins the truck around and backs it up to a wall of flame, hitting the brakes hard so that a big chunk of dirt goes flying out of the bed and into the street. It smothers enough of the fire to make a hole. He gets out to run through it but he's too late.

Has been too late for about ten minutes, because, he realizes as he gets a better look, while everyone's accounted for, they aren't all okay.

There’s a guy around Alec’s age, another X5, twisted in an awkward position on the ground and trying valiantly to get back up. It’s made extra difficult by the bulletholes that have practically shredded his legs, and judging by how rapidly the pool of blood around him is growing, one of those bullets has hit a major artery.

That’s bad enough, but then there’s the teenage girl Alec had spotted from the roof. She’s flat on her back, eyes glassy and unfocused, the front of her jacket soaked red. The boy from the Citgo robbery is on his knees, bowed over her and blubbering nonsense. One of his hands clutches at her shoulder while the other applies pressure, and his hand seems ludicrously out of proportion when compared to the size of the stain—so small, and Alec can’t help but think that’s never going to work.

He moves to help, gaze flickering over the back of the boy’s bared neck out of habit—subconsciously filing away designations and names to add to his mental list of failures—and pauses as it clicks: the reason he didn't figure it out earlier.

There’s no barcode on the kid’s neck. No faint scarring from too many laser removals, either. Alec has become acutely sensitive to that kind of thing, was up close enough to the boy at the store that he would’ve noticed one and he didn’t. It didn’t occur to him at the time that not all transgenics have barcodes these days. He knew the possibility existed, of course, he was just too distracted with all the other stuff going down to think of it.

This kid's the product of good old-fashioned breeding and, crazily, that fact makes Alec feel even worse. What a bunch of naïve, wide-eyed jerkoffs they'd all been to think the lack of barcodes meant freedom for the new generation. Marked or not, they're all still freaks.

The other transgenics have gotten the X5’s leg tied off while Alec has been standing around fucking woolgathering, so he snaps himself out of it. There’s not much they can do for the girl, he doesn’t blame them for not trying anything more than making her comfortable, but he can’t make that logic apply to himself and kneels down to do something. Anything.

Before he can get very far, the boy jumps up, face blotchy and wet and his eyes glittering with rage. He lashes out, kicking Alec in the bicep and then his thigh, starts throwing wild punches and screaming at him to, "Get off, just get off, you did this, I told you not to but you wouldn’t listen and now look! Look what you did!"

"I’m sorry," Alec chokes out. "I. I didn’t mean—"

"Go screw yourself!" The kid hits him again, kicks him again. When he lands a punch to Alec’s brow that splits it open and realizes Alec isn’t even making an effort to defend himself, he seems to deflate suddenly.

The boy jerks away and returns to his friend, pulling her close to his chest.

Hiccuping a little, he says, "Leave her alone and just. Just go away."

Alec nods, feeling a little lost. Lost for words, mostly, because there’s nothing he can say that would make it …

There’s just nothing to say.

Blood trickles into his eye. Alec swipes clumsily at his face, his goddamn hands shaking—

shredded air sound from above

—and looks up.

Beams of light sweep in slow arcs, noise swelling up on them fast. Helicopters. Of course there are helicopters. It wouldn't be worth much if the authorities didn't make as big of a spectacle as possible out of this whole thing, and they have maybe a minute before they're locked in the sights of a rocket launcher or whatever other over-the-top bullshit these assholes are bringing in.

Don't be stupid. Isn't that what the kid had said, back at the store? But Alec's pretty in the mood for stupid just now.

"Run," he tells the lizard guy, who's managed to get the X5 off the ground and has pushed him into the embrace of one of his friends, the girl's near-lifeless body hanging there in his arms while the boy hovers at his elbow. Alec does his very best not to look at her again.

The lizard guy cocks his chin, jerks it sideways—after you—and the boy stops glaring daggers at Alec long enough to turn it on the transhuman, like you must be joking.

Alec shakes his head. "Take your family and get out of here before they see you."

The transhuman can't afford waste anymore time arguing. One last look over his shoulder as he hefts the girl to fit more securely against his chest, and then he herds them all away.

Alec doesn't hang around watch them go. He takes to the roof again, uses that one as a step up to a taller building, climbs as high as he can go before he jumps up and down, waving his arms around. "Over here, you dicks! Come and get me!"

White light floods his vision, and he runs.

They always happen so fast, these kinds of things. Right in the middle of the pandemonium, thoughts and reactions and circumstances all run at different speeds, never lining up right. Keeping himself alive is the easy part. Saving everyone else—that's where shit gets tricky.

That's where shit gets thoroughly obliterated, Alec mentally corrects himself, the wind at his back like it's urging him to go ahead and try to fly, and so he does. Keeps running right off the edge of the building, a little extra momentum at the last second to catapult him through the air and onto the next roof. The choppers are still on him, two of them, big spots of light swinging in front of him to brighten the way, and that's how he wants it for now.

It seems like the thing to do, anyway, even if it's probably not going to work. Witness the dead bodies in his wake in a less-than-24-hour period. Try to do something normal, screw it up. Try to do the right thing and fix it, and there's always an explosion, fire, hail of bullets, something. He should've quit while he was ahead. It was ridiculous to think it could've turned out any other way just because a little time's gone by. A streak like that doesn't come with an expiration date. Fighting past experience, trying to prove himself wrong, it's sort of like trying to cross a tightrope in ice skates over a bottomless pit without once looking down, because if he looks down, that's it, he'll fall endlessly or go mad or burst into flames, or maybe all three. Only worse, because he has to live to tell the tale.

Scowling, Alec takes a hard left and drops sharply, landing on an empty sidewalk. He figures he's played with the choppers long enough. If he keeps it up much longer, taunting them in plain view, they'll call in reinforcements and he'll most certainly lose that race. He should at least act like he's trying to get away.

The act only remains an act for so long, though. Apparently, the authorities organized themselves a lot faster than he was expecting, because every nook and cranny he tries to duck into is immediately floodlit by one chopper or another, ground troops pouring in and the whole night flashing blue-red-blue behind him as he scrambles to get out before they can surround him.

It goes on like that for too long, the pack on his back getting heavier and heavier, and this isn't exactly some abandoned neighborhood he can get easily lost in. All these gawkers spilling out of doorways, tripping him up, slowing him down and giving him even stupider ideas because if one more bystander throws trash at him, Alec is going to stop seeing hurdles and start seeing hostages, and then where will they be.

Last-ditch effort, Alec sees an alleyway and swerves into it, full-speed, throwing himself over the hood of a decrepit delivery truck blocking the way and barely managing to keep his feet when he lands. No time to bemoan his lack of grace, he runs and runs—

Feels like he hits an invisible wall when an arm snakes out of nowhere and yanks him sideways.

Alec goes tumbling in through the side door of a condemned building, that yanking force keeping him upright as he spins around, ready to fight for his life. The door slams shut, yellow slice of streetlights snuffed out and leaving him in the dark. His vision adjusts quickly but it's still disorienting.

"This way, come on," a voice says.

Alec doesn't know whether to be relieved or furious when he recognizes it. "You crazy fuck," is all Alec manages to gasp out before Ben's hand is yanking at him some more, dragging him further inside, saying, "Hurry up, come on, move."

As they hustle through a maze of crumbling rooms and hallways, Alec thinks he recognizes the place to be the hollowed shell of a once-popular restaurant, but he doesn't get much chance to sightsee before he's being none-too-gently ushered down a couple flights of stairs and ends up in a subbasement.

He resolutely chooses not to ask about the days-old, blood-spattered corpse of what is clearly a hobo propped up in the corner.

"Here," says Ben, squeezing himself behind a pile of broken dining furniture that someone was maybe hoping to repair before the whole building fell into disuse. He pushes a table to one side, revealing a pint-sized hole in the wall where snapped hinges indicate a tiny door used to sit. He tugs Alec's arm again.

Faintest sounds of police organizing outside, not enough time for him to stop and think if this is a good idea or not, following his evil twin down into the bowels of nowhere—not a lot of choice, come to that—and so Alec goes along willingly. For now. He takes his arm back, though, jerking out of Ben's grip on principle.

Ben doesn't let it deter him, apparently expecting Alec to follow his better senses for the time being. He disappears into the crawlspace, all hunched back and tightened shoulders to fit himself inside. The way through is long and convoluted, all these twists and drop-offs leading them straight down into Hell, for all Alec knows, and after what feels like forever he's getting pretty goddamn cranky about it.

"Just a little further," Ben says, like he can sense Alec's mood curdling.

A couple more minutes and Alec feels a gust of stale air hit his face, so maybe Ben's insane but at least he's not a liar, and that's something.

He doesn't know what to expect but it's certainly not more darkness. "Where the hell are we?" Alec asks, finally allowed to straighten up and stretch out his limbs.

Ben walks ahead, not answering right away, so sure of where he's going that Alec boggles at it for a minute. It makes him wonder how long, exactly, Ben has been in Chicago. How he knows so well parts of the city Alec never knew existed.

Ben leans down and fumbles with something. "Old subway tunnel," he says, and then a light flares, illuminating the cracked concrete walls and the twisted tracks half-buried in broken up chunks of yet more concrete.

Part of the tunnel is caved in a little ways behind them, the jackknifed wreckage of a subway train wedged in the middle of it all. There’s the faintest scent of old death down here and Alec imagines skeletons trapped deep inside, where it’s too perilous for the living to retrieve them. The Pulse, Alec thinks automatically, because he’s seen enough of the country by now to be familiar with all these mostly forgotten little aftermaths forever frozen in time, and it really shouldn’t surprise him in the least that this is the kinda place Ben chose as a lair.

Ben's holding an ancient-looking oil lantern, talking and still moving forward, giving Alec the tour. Alec follows cautiously until they emerge out onto a boarding platform that looks just as post-apocalyptic as everything else, but is at least more spacious, listening as Ben points and outlines all the escape routes. There aren’t many, the main entrance sealed off with cement and steel, but any crevice or cavity that could lead to a way out, no matter how small or inconvenient, Ben has found and explored already.

Alec does some poking around on his own, anyway, reflexive thoughts filing in one after the other to say this would be a good place to lower supplies through and those holes are perfectly spaced for makeshift bunks and that tunnel back there would be ideal for a last stand in the event of a raid and—

He scowls, firmly pumping those mental brakes. Alec’s not helping to lead a revolution anymore. Even if he’s silently judging Ben for not sharing the wealth that is this spectacularly concealed hideout with others who are are in dire need of it, he has no use for that kind of thinking anymore. He can already hear the very practical argument that Ben would surely have for not telling others, anyway, because if others knew then others would know, and probably they wouldn’t be able to help telling close friends and comrades in arms, and too many ears picking up intel like that makes for bad endings, more often than not.

Shaking it off, Alec lets his eyes keep wandering, catching sight of the nest Ben's made down here. Crammed between a couple of crumbling pillars are some old blankets, boxes and bags full of supplies, a deck of bent cards scattered in what looks to be a hastily abandoned game of Solitaire, and isn't that a sad statement all by itself, Alec thinks. Then he looks at Ben.

Really looks.

Alec had been a little too preoccupied with the run-and-hide state of things to notice before, but Ben is fucked up, no two ways about it. His face is back to being filthy, this look of residual panic settled into it like a stain that's not coming out. He’s not wearing that stupid hat anymore and the clothes Alec had seen him in earlier are down to rags, too much scraped-up skin on display and a mess of old surgical scars showing.

Alec gets stuck on that for a minute, moving forward without really telling himself to, and before he knows it he's tipping Ben's head forward, running a hand over the patches of missing hair and down his neck and upper back, where the scarring is at its worst. Ben jumps a little but he doesn't pull away, and Alec knows Ben had to've been cut open again and again, old paths revisited so many times, for the scars to be this bad. There doesn't look to be any sense to it. What the hell could Manticore have been looking for in there, a Cracker Jack prize?

Coming back to himself and realizing what he's doing, Alec backs away hastily, stomping the guilt that tries to surge up. If anyone should be feeling guilty here, it's Ben. Ben's the one whose brain short-circuited and screwed them both over.

Ben's whole body kinda tilts forward, trying to keep Alec's hands on him for a second without really seeming to notice, and then he stands up too straight, compensating.

"How long have you been following me?" Alec asks, putting some more distance between them.

Ben shrugs and looks away, caught out. "A while," he admits, and it's all he's going to admit. Alec knows that evasive tone as well as he knows himself.

"Why?" Alec persists anyway.

Ben's mouth twists, and he goes to set the lantern on the ground, crouching down to rifle through his stuff as if he's actually looking for something. Some kind of physical evidence to present in answer, maybe, but most likely just hoping to distract Alec from this line of questioning for as long as possible. His search proves fruitful after a tense minute, a small and flat, shiny disc pulled from the pocket of his bag that he rubs between his fingers—nervous habit, if the worn-down etching that can barely be made out is any indication.

He rummages around some more and digs out his beanie next, pulling it tightly over his head before confessing, "I was curious."

"About?"

"Wanted to see how the other half lives," Ben bites out a little sarcastically, and he's not the only one losing patience.

"Great," Alec snaps. "So you came, you saw, why are you still here?"

Ben straightens and gives another irritated jerk of his shoulders, still turned away from Alec and glaring at the wall almost as thoroughly as Alec is glaring at his profile. He opens his mouth, closes it, shakes his head. Shrugs again, turning around to look Alec in the eye and gestures vaguely at him, as if that's all the answer he can manage.

Alec sighs. Fucking Ben. Fucking poorly stitched-together Ben with all the stuffing poking out of his seams. There are so many other questions Alec should be asking, so many accusations to let fly and old grudges to air out, but, abruptly, he feels a wave of despair crashing over him and he just. Cannot do it.

"Listen, whatever this is," he motions between the two of them. "You need to let it go."

Ben gets this look like Alec just asked him to cut his own throat. "But I."

He licks his lips, spreading his hands out in front of him a little helplessly. The disc falls, dangling from the end of a gold chain looped between his fingers.

"I don't want to," is what he settles on, eyes all huge and guileless, and Alec—seeing his own face like that, this unnatural naked honesty like Ben is fooling anyone here (all while getting a clearer view of the necklace and recalling the copy that Max kept in her apartment and referred to as exhibit A every time she felt like getting maudlin about her ill-fated big brother)—Alec decides to put it into terms Ben can't misinterpret or argue with in any way.

It's not like he didn't warn him.

Caught off guard, Ben takes Alec's punch full in the face, whirling sideways with the force of it and staggering to keep his balance.

"I told you," Alec spits, punching him again, and this time Ben manages to dodge, Alec's fist glancing the side of his cheek before plowing harmlessly into thin air, "to leave me," Alec recovers quickly, grabs him by what's left of his shirt and shakes him, hard, "the fuck," pushes him down on the ground, all his weight behind it so that Ben smashes bone-jarringly into the concrete, "alone."

Ben doesn't waste much time being stunned by the outburst, his legs kicking out and swiveling, tangling up in Alec's own. Too caught up in his own assault, Alec can't get out of the way fast enough and goes down. Ben scrambles up and over him, face black as a storm as he jams his forearm down against Alec's throat. It's not hard enough to choke him, merely an uncomfortable warning, and Alec goes still, waiting. He wasn't looking for a showdown, just wanted to get his point across and now that he has, he's morbidly curious as to where Ben wants to take this.

Ben is absolutely trembling with defiance. "I don't want to," he says again, like it's all so very basic and why can't Alec just get it already.

Alec doesn’t really think he can get it given he lacks Ben’s particular brand of crazy, but he still finds himself asking, "Then what the hell do you want?"

Ben seems surprised by the question, like he wasn’t expecting Alec to keep trying to have a conversation. But Alec is tired of running. He figures if he sticks around long enough to puzzle Ben out, he’ll have a better chance of shaking him. Threats and violence obviously aren’t cutting it.

Ben backs off, hesitant and watching carefully, allowing Alec room to sit up but staying close. They settle across from each other, legs crossed and postures uncomfortable.

Ben says, "I don’t really know how to answer that," but his expression says different. The uncertainty in it doesn’t seem to be a loss for words so much as fear of revealing too much, too soon.

"You didn’t come here to kill me," Alec asserts when Ben is silent for too long. "I thought that at first because of the whole hating yourself thing. And we share a face. But you’ve had plenty of chances, so … " he trails off, prompting Ben to fill in the blanks.

Ben licks at his split lip as he starts playing with the pendant again, and that seems to help him find a starting point. "I know you think I’m," he points a finger at his own head and makes a swirling motion, "whatever. But I don’t want to hurt you." Ben pauses, frowning like he's trying to pick out just the right words, and settles on, "I’m better now."

Alec regards him dubiously. "Are you?"

Ben sighs, shoulders slumping. He looks every bit the scolded child, caught out before the lie could get off the ground. "No." He blows out a breath. "It's a process, that's what they said. But I didn’t come here to hurt you, that part's true."

Ben eyes him again, searching, and Alec does his best to appear receptive so they can get the hell on with this.

"I went looking for Max first," he goes on, but then he stops, brows and mouth pinched tight like he did something wrong, or he’s stuck, or—

Alec has no idea. If this is Ben feeling remorse, it’s a little weird, and a lot too late.

Or maybe …

Alec knows how things played out last time Ben went looking for Max. And perhaps when he found her in a state that wasn’t capable of delivering a second time, he came looking for Alec to pick up the slack. Maybe he thinks it’s some kind of poetic justice, getting himself to off himself after a life of hunting himself. And if that’s the game, Alec isn’t so sure he’d say no.

"What’s the matter, can’t do it yourself?"

"What?"

"Seems like a lot of trouble to go to for another suicide-by-transgenic."

"No, that’s not. I don’t wanna die."

"Then what?" Alec demands, frustrated.

Ben loops the necklace across his hand again, letting the pendant rest over his fingers so Alec can see the engraving of his "Blue Lady" more clearly. "I know she's not real. I know that. Sometimes I don't really feel it, but I know," he explains. "I blamed everyone else: Manticore, the people I killed, the Lady, but. It's just me. They said I had to learn to cope with what's real. You don’t get to lose your mind just because life is hard. And I tried. I’m trying." Ben's face hardens, and Alec tenses. "But they also said hunting people is bad and I’m being hunted, I’m always being hunted. That's real, too, and I don't wanna fucking cope with that. If I have the power to stop it, why should I have to?" He looks to Alec, then, plaintive, defiant, waiting to be validated or corrected. Waiting for the some magical answer that will unlock this cruel, twisted puzzle that is his life.

Alec’s got nothing, but Ben comes down from his little tirade on his own, lets out another long breath and stares at his fidgeting fingers some more. "Anyway, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to suspect they’re not being a hundred percent truthful. Or maybe they just don’t know as much as they think."

"Okay," says Alec, slow. "So what it is you think I can do?"

"Tell me the truth," Ben says immediately. "You’re real, too. Maybe the most real, and I. I don’t trust myself to know. I don’t trust anyone."

"But you’d trust me?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"That kid. Dalton? He told me some stuff. Stories. About you."

Alec stays silent, not sure he wants to hear what anyone from TC thinks of him now. Ben apparently takes that as his cue to continue.

"I didn’t really believe it, at first. Thought maybe he was messing with me. I mean, we’re literally made of the same stuff and I’m … you know. The idea that another version of me could be worthy of the kind of admiration that he had for you? It was fascinating but it was still hard to buy into. I had to find you. Had to see it."

Alec squirms, cheeks heating up. "Sorry to be such a disappointment."

"You’re not." Ben’s eyes brighten; he’s getting a little too zealous for comfort now, and Alec doesn’t want that. He is so far from wanting that. "I saw you. At the store, and after. You kept trying to help even when it was a terrible idea."

"Yeah, because this shit is my fault in the first place. That’s just what you do."

"That’s what you do. I wouldn’t have."

"I don’t—"

"That guy upstairs," Ben talks right over him. "You saw him?"

Warily, Alec nods.

"He tried to take my stuff. He had a knife. I gutted him without thinking twice. I could’ve done something else to stop him, he was hungry and weak, it would’ve been easy. But I couldn’t even consider that until it was too late. And I don’t know how to make that go away."

About ten times more uncomfortable than when this little chat first started, Alec pushes to his feet, needing to regain some distance. But then Ben rises too, closing the gap. It’s fucking ridiculous how awful the guy is at taking a hint.

Alec holds up an arm in warning, and when he moves away again Ben stays put. "Look, I’m sorry things are so hard for you," he says slowly, searching for the right words. "But I. I’m not the shining example of morality you seem to think I am. Yeah, I’ve tried to help people but if you’ve been watching me as long as you say, then you’ve seen how well that goes. I’m the last person in the world to be your life coach, or whatever the hell you’re looking for. I can’t help you."

"Alec—"

"No," Alec says firmly, cutting a hand through the air. "No more talking. No more stalking. Jesus, do you have any idea what you’re asking? You show up, tell me you killed my best friend, and oh, by the way, could you teach me how to stop being psychotic? I can’t be responsible for you. I’ve been there, done that, and I can’t again. I’m barely responsible for myself these days."

"She asked me to," Ben defends, apparently choosing to only hear one part of Alec’s argument.

"That doesn’t mean you should’ve done it!"

"How do you know that? How am I supposed to know that? Max was good, she was a good person and when I asked her to, she did it. She did it, so why was it wrong for me to do it?"

"You were fucked up when you asked for that. You said she was fucked up. And when someone’s fucked up, they usually aren’t the best judges of what’s good for them."

"I don’t understand."

"Of course you don’t." Alec lets out a harsh laugh, shaking his head at how Ben’s already sucked him into playing the teacher without even realizing it. He takes another step back. "Please just leave me alone." It comes out sounding more desperate than he’d like. He gives Ben a look, silently pleading for him to understand. "I can’t."

Ben steps closer. "But I want—"

Alec punches him again, hard as he can, knocking Ben back against the pillar. Ben doesn’t retaliate, choosing instead to gape at him with huge, wounded eyes, and Alec has to look away. He feels so drained, suddenly, cornered and desperate for an out, even if it leads him right back into the sights of a thousand high-powered rifles.

With all the finality he can muster, he says, "You can’t always get what you want."

And before Ben can respond to that stunningly brilliant platitude, Alec spins on his heel, not-quite-running for an exit.

He should've kidnapped her.

Alec realizes now that that's where he went wrong. Listening to Max like she knew what the right thing was, because the right thing was all she ever tried to do when he knew her, was a mistake. If he'd just knocked her upside the head and hogtied her, stuffed her in the trunk and hightailed it to the middle of nowhere so she could safely throw her hissy fit until he made her see what was good for her, none of this would have happened.

After spending the rest of the the night skulking around the city, a few near-misses that involved running for his life, gunfights in crowded areas, more grand theft auto and a higher-speed chase, Alec is beginning to really appreciate the merits of extreme measures. When he sees the Mercedes idling next to a fancy bar that's just closed down for the night, he suddenly understands that kidnapping was the answer to all of his problems all along, clearly.

"Shut up," he grates out, eyes skittering around the dark side street for witnesses while, with a pistol in each hand, he encourages the driver to sit tight and the woman to exit the passenger seat, slowly and quietly. She's not really getting that last part, whimpering and sobbing into her hands. "Listen, lady, if you just do what I freakin' tell you, we won't have any problems. Shutting the hell up is an important part of that."

The rain's back and the wind is icy and brutal. Alec's hungry again (had to ditch his supplies in his getaway), exhausted and sick of thinking about shit he hasn't thought about in years, and his shoulder is on fire from where he took a bullet a couple hours ago. He's lucky it's the only hit he took, that he hasn't bled out yet, but that kind of crap luck's not going to hold out much longer and he's definitely not in the mood for any woe-is-me blubbering from the privileged assholes of Ordinary society.

The woman manages to press her gloved hands tighter to her face, muffling the noise some. Alec guides her around the back of the car when the driver (her husband, judging from the murder in the guy's eyes) pops the trunk. She immediately gets hysterical again, so Alec shoves her in impatiently and slams it shut. Walks around to the driver's side.

"This is how it's going to play out," he tells the husband, who's bundled up in his high-dollar coat and scarf, the Mercedes’ heater blasting so high it's drowning out the softly playing radio and making his face all red. Maybe some of that color is Alec's doing, but he's not really inclined to care right now. "You're headed out of the city on business, I don't care what kind, just make something up. We're gonna cruise through the checkpoints nice and easy, and if anyone comes poking around the trunk, your wife dies. I'm not gonna negotiate with anyone. Doesn't matter if I'm caught right after, won't make it any better or worse for me to kill her. I can probably manage a bullet for you, too, before they get me. Understand?"

The husband's face goes near-purple, but he nods.

"We're gonna be real cozy back there," Alec adds. "Human shield and all that, so heat scanners won't improve anyone's aim much."

"I got it," the guy bites out. "How far do I have to go before you fuck off?"

"Just get me through Checkpoint K and out past the train tracks. Pull over and honk when we're there—do not get out and try to open the trunk yourself; I might get trigger-happy. When the trunk opens, count to one hundred. After that, you're free and clear."

"How do I know you won't just kill us both?"

Alec stares hard at the guy. He's got no intention of killing either of them, but he can't let them know that. This is the part where he's supposed to say something reassuring like, I'm not a monster. I just want to live and you assholes are hellbent against letting me, so this is the kinda shit I've gotta do. It's what Max would say (probably with less cussing and more attitude), but Max is gone and Alec is here. That stuff never gets through, anyway, and he's still bleeding all over the street, so he just says, "Use your common sense and figure out your chances. Cooperate and maybe live, or don't cooperate and definitely die."

With that, Alec goes to fold himself in the trunk alongside his hostage.

Falters when he catches the urgent soundtrack of breaking news on the car’s radio. The voice of an overexcited newscaster quickly follows; something about another transgenic run-in with the police, and Alec works very hard not to care.

He resumes walking, almost makes it to the trunk when he hears the one thing that, a few minutes ago, would’ve had him swearing up and down that it’d only make him run away faster. Instead, it stops him cold.

"—police have finally caught up to the transgenic who was reported robbing a convenience store early this morning—"

"Turn that up," he demands, scaring the driver half out of his seat when he appears at the window again.

The guy scowls hard but does what he’s told.

"—Mike joins me live by phone now."

"We’re standing in front of the building where the fugitive has taken cover. There’s an unknown number of hostages inside, and we’ve been told that at least twelve people are dead. The entire roadway is filled with spectators and emergency response crews—you can probably hear the chaos. People are shouting and holding up anti-transgenic signs. The police have put up barricades to try and keep the crowd out of harm's way. They don’t know if the fugitive is armed—if he has a gun—but the police are proceeding with extreme caution."

"There’ve been reports that the FBI is there. Can you confirm that?"

"The FBI showed up less than an hour ago and it appears they’re now officially in charge."

A new voice chimes in, sounding farther away, "You need to move back. Get out of the street."

"The police are warning people to clear the street." Mike says. "They’re putting up more barricades. We're going to have to move, give us a second."

"Okay, Mike, let me know when you get settled. Once again, listeners, the transgenic who was caught on camera robbing a convenience store this morning is now trapped in an office building downtown, surrounded by police."

"Crap," Alec says, gritting his teeth as the newscaster rambles on about Alec’s rooftop chase earlier, and a bunch of blah-bitty-blah that basically translates to how it serves him right for being a pain in the ass.

It shouldn’t matter. Alec really, really wants it to not matter. Except.

Ben would probably still be playing cards with himself in his underground hideaway if Alec had stayed put. Probably tried to follow him out and then got himself caught. Alec tries to tell himself it’s not his fault his twin is a dumbass, though. Tries to tell himself the blame lies with Ben, all the way. Even if Alec technically started this whole mess, it wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t been so … thrown. Ben's not just bad luck, he's a plague of catastrophe, spreading his special brand of FUBAR far and wide and grinning that goddamn lunatic grin the whole way. Alec never had any trouble going shopping, for fuck's sake, before that cursed bastard showed up.

Besides, Alec would have to be the biggest idiot on the planet to try infiltrating a mob of bloodthirsty law enforcement sitting smack in the middle of even more bloodthirsty citizens. Especially when "FBI" is doubtlessly code for "Ames White and his wacky genocidal cult buddies."

Right. So, whatever. Alec has scored his ticket out of here and it’s time to punch it.

He bites his lip.

Grudgingly, Alec turns back to the driver. "Alright, change of plans."

He explains to new route they’re going to take, tries to soften the blow of the whole thing by saying that one checkpoint between them and their new destination is better than the four checkpoints between them and the city limits, but the driver doesn’t look any happier about it.

"You’re crazy," seems to be his wholehearted opinion on the matter.

Alec smirks tiredly. "You should see the other guy."

Head spinning with a new kind of anxiety, he manages to make it to the trunk without changing his mind again, and hopes like hell that the warmth and blood loss won't tug him into unconsciousness before he's ready.

What seemed brilliant a few minutes ago is starting to look less so, but it's too late to back out now.

-:-

So, okay. Definitely not the best plan he's ever had.

It's not a short drive to the checkpoint, what with all the traffic jams the city-wide search is causing, and the car is jarring his bad shoulder so much he's on the verge of honest-to-god tears. The woman he's blanketing himself with is shaking and crying a snotty mess all over his neck and face, and, icing on the sucktastic-cake, she pissed all over herself—and him—about five minutes into the ride. Alec is annoyed and ashamed of himself, and also annoyed.

Ben is the epitome of what people believe of transgenics, as a whole, the one who actually deserves to be put down like the wrongheaded animal he is. Alec doesn't know what he’s thinking, putting himself through all this. Saving Ben won't help anyone.

So maybe that's what it is. Maybe the not helping is what appeals to Alec, big fuck you to the city and all the backwards-thinking metropolises like it. Or maybe it’s just that if anyone’s going to be killing Ben, it’s Alec. He earned that privilege first and it’s his to keep.

Maybe he's a little more unhinged than he thought.

When the car finally slows, Alec clenches his teeth and presses the muzzle of his gun to the woman's temple. Her breath hitches once, but she goes quiet. He tries to channel some reassurance through the grip on her elbow, but she only stiffens like she might pee again, so he gives that up pretty quickly.

The car stops, and a man's voice filters back: a cop.

Alec's relieved to note the driver's voice stays steady and confident when he replies, even manages to get a few laughs out of the cop as they go through the usual questions: Where are you headed? Did you leave your vehicle unattended at any time between here and home? Et cetera, et cetera.

It's all going smoothly until the cop says, "Please unlock the back doors and pop the trunk, sir," and Alec's head goes white with panic.

The driver stammers a little, then regains enough of himself to feign a little of that rich-man's entitled indignation. "What the hell for?"

"Standard procedure," the cop says, and Alec is so stupid. Alec is fucked six ways from Sunday and so incredibly stupid. Of course it's standard procedure when there are monsters on the loose, fuck.

The woman on top of him starts shaking and crying again, inconsolable in the face of her imminent doom, and Alec can't say, "I'm not going to shoot you, shut up," because then she'd probably start screaming. But he's not going to shoot her, that much hasn't changed, even if he's certainly going to die in the next few seconds, even if he's so extraordinarily furious with her and everything she stands for.

Goddamn people, Alec thinks, pushing the lady to the side so he can squirm closer to the back. She keeps sobbing, muttering stuff about her children's weddings and her husband's retirement and all the other things she wants to live for, all accusing, like he has single-handedly ushered in the apocalypse, and Alec is starting to lose his temper a little bit. He hasn't lost his temper in a long time. Has been through more feelings today than in the past five years combined.

"I just wanted some fucking chips so my stomach would stop fucking eating itself. How does that cost me my fucking life?" he mutters angrily as he pries at the carpeting underneath, like maybe he can burrow his way out, or something. Christ, he doesn't even know what the hell he's doing anymore. His shoulder screams at him from where he's laying on it to get a better angle; he's going to black out in a minute, which is probably the best way to face his execution, anyway. "You think I wanna be here? You think hiding in a trunk with a bullet in my shoulder and marinating in your bodily fluids is fun for me? You think I wouldn't rather be holed up in some abandoned shack living like the goddamn animal you seem to think I am? Because I totally would. I'd love and romance the chance for a dumpster-dinner, if it meant you people would leave me the fuck alone and stop trying to slaughter me for fucking breathing."

And once he gets going, there's no stopping. He's desperately tearing up his fingers trying to dig his way through carpet and steel, a trapped animal trying to scrabble its way out of a corner, no matter how fruitless or self-destructive, and the flood gates are wide open.

"I didn't ask to be whipped up in a test tube, and I sure as hell didn't ask for some crazy X5 with a peace-love-and-understanding agenda to burn my house down, lady. Fucking whacked, every single one us, for going along with that shit. 'Cause of course we were gonna be able to make love and not war with the people vicious enough to manufacture a bunch of babies for the sole purpose of turning them into killing machines, makes perfect sense, right? Totally silly to think you'd blow us all sky-high for having minds of our own.

Your country's all about having the biggest, baddest weapons and racking up the highest body count, and you act like we're the worst thing that ever happened to you. Like we just materialized out of the ether and it wasn't you assholes who thought us up in the first place. You people blew up my home, killed my friends, and now you're hunting us down, one by one. Yeah, we're the monsters, but you wanna know something? If we were as bloodthirsty as you made us out to be, this whole country would be drowning in its own blood right now, because we're professionals, lady. We're really fucking amazing at neutralizing the enemy, that's what you made us to be. But no one's drowning, and we're the ones in hiding, so what does that tell you, huh? What the fuck does that tell you?"

Alec doesn't notice exactly when the woman stops blubbering, or that he's kind of started to, just keeps up his goodbye, cruel world speechifying, while willing the lightheadedness into full-on unconciousness already. He doesn't really know when he went from criticizing Max's ghost, to having her possess him and take over his mouth, either. He just wants to go home, even if he doesn't know where that is anymore, and that comes pouring out against his will, too, goddamn it.

He nearly jumps out of his skin when a gloved hand clamps over his mouth, rolls onto his back and finds the woman staring down at him with wide eyes, or at least in his general direction. Takes him a minute to remember she can't see in the dark.

She pulls her hand away and shushes him, still staring into nothing with rabid curiosity, like she's trying to get a better look at something alien, but Alec doesn't get it. He's confused, and he wasn't done talking, apparently. "I'm not gonna kill you, even though you're about to feed me to the hounds with a smile on your face." he says. "I was never gonna—what the hell is going on?"

The car lurches forward and the trunk lid stays firmly shut.

"You were getting a bit hysterical," the woman tells him, like she's never fallen victim to such a thing in her life. "Loud."

"What?"

"Would've wasted all my husband's hard, bribing efforts if you'd gone on much longer," she clarifies, and pats him on the head like she wasn't terrified he'd bite her face off a few minutes ago.

"What? I don't—what?" Looks like all his words have gone away, except that one.

She smiles at him, a little uncertain, and pats at his good shoulder. "You didn't think he was going to let them come back here and get me killed, did you? He's very convincing; you couldn’t have picked a better hostage, honestly."

Oh. Okay, then. So Alec's plan was awesome the whole time and he just vomited up all those last words for nothing.

Awkward.

-:-

With his wife is safely back up front and Alec stumbling up onto the curb, the Mercedes’ driver can’t peel away from the street corner fast enough.

Mind sluggish, Alec stands there for a little while, rain pelting his face and blurring his vision as he scans rooftops and rifles through his memory for the layout of this neighborhood. A couple blocks over, he can hear police shouting into bullhorns, not quite drowned out by the crowd. Traffic cruises by and splashes him with mud and more water, and it occurs to him after a minute or so that he should probably not be hanging out in plain sight like this.

He has to stop and let a wave of dizziness pass before he gets very far. He should really get this freaking bullet out of his shoulder soon.

"Okay," Alec breathes out when it’s time to stop and reassess. He peeks around the corner of an apartment building across the street from the building he wants, heart skipping a couple of beats when he catches sight of the wall. That’s the only way to describe it. Authorities, news crews, civilians and all their vehicles and accessories are packed in so tight it’s like a living, breathing structure of its own.

"Avoid news cameras," he mutters aloud, psyching himself up for mission impossible. "Get past the pitchfork mob. Resist waving hi to the FBI. Rescue the possibly armed whackjob who may or may not be holding a grudge. Don’t get shot again. Easy as pie."

Briefly, he entertains the idea of luring a cop or ambulance worker over and trying to sneak through the crowd in a stolen uniform, but they used that ruse to escape Jam Pony way back when and White is, unfortunately, not a really idiotic archnemesis who’s likely to fall for the same trick twice.

He looks up and discards the idea of another roof. He’s definitely not up for anymore acrobatics tonight.

"Down under it is, then," Alec decides, spotting a storm drain.

He doesn’t climb down so much as fall into the hole semi-gracefully, but he makes it without breaking anything so he’ll count that as a win.

Stumbling his way underneath the pandemonium and finding the building’s parking garage is easy enough, but he stalls under the grate that leads back up when he hears authoritative voices barking orders back and forth. He hadn’t been able to see much through the swarm of people, so he wasn’t aware that the cops have already started securing the lower levels.

Which means Ben is up high.

Low on options, Alec lets the sweep to pass him by, biding his time until one of the men finally declares the section clear. The majority of officers move on but a couple of guys are posted right on top of him, eyes alert for incoming. They aren’t looking for incoming from down here, though, the morons, and so Alec climbs up out of the ground, quietly and so, so carefully. Before either of them can sound an alarm, Alec punches one out and wraps his arms around the other’s neck, guiding him silently to the pavement as he passes out.

Scoping out the scene from his improved vantage point, he discovers there’s a support beam blocking the line of sight between him and the cops guarding the entrance. He loots the unconscious men for more weapons and slinks away to locate the nearest stairwell.

It’s not until he’s standing in front of the steps that he remembers this building is really very tall. With a lot of floors.

And a lot of stairs.

Fucking Ben, Alec thinks on a long exhale, and starts to climb.

-:-

On the second floor, Alec gets into a scuffle with another two-man patrol and takes a tumble back down to the first floor somewhere in the middle of it, badly twisting his knee.

"Fuck," he spits, and kicks the unconscious cop who pushed him for good measure. That sends another agonizing jolt through his leg, and he has to stand there taking short, quick breaths until it subsides again.

Putting weight on it doesn’t go much better, and recovering the lost ground takes twice as long as it had the first time.

His relief is pure and overwhelming when he hits the eighth floor and barely misses tripping over the body sprawled across the landing. Going all the way to the top might have killed him, and he really didn’t want to have to go out so ridiculously after all this.

The security guard’s neck is broken, head twisted backwards and one foot stuck in the stairwell’s door, holding it open enough for Alec to see another body in the hallway beyond it. When he makes it into the hallway proper, he has to take a moment to marvel at what he finds.

There are bodies all over the place. Aside from the two he had to step over, it seems they’d all been coming from the direction of the elevators and a more central staircase. Looks like Ben was dropping his pursuers left and right as he went, limbs and necks all wrong-angled, most of the outstretched hands clutching or reaching toward a variety of weapons. Yet not a drop of blood has been spilled. Every one of them is in a uniform of some kind—police or the building’s private security—and Alec feels a little embarrassed for them.

Mess with a tiger and someone’s bound to get mauled, he thinks, almost unwillingly, then hastily chases it down with a healthy dose of guilt and resentment.

"I said shut up."

Ben.

Cocking his head, Alec picks up on more voices a little ways down. The fearful murmurs of the captives are to be expected, but Ben’s is the clearest, a kind of emotionless resignation there that Alec would like to pretend doesn’t bother him.

He follows the noise and the trail of corpses until he runs into a closed door.

Last chance to turn back, and so he stares at it for far too long. Really needs to push aside the reckless mindset this day has inflicted on him and think very, very hard about what he’s getting himself into here.

Alec's a specialized soldier with a high IQ and primal instincts. Ben's a wild animal with opposable thumbs and tactical training.

There's no way this will end well.

Alec goes in.

The power has been cut, and the office would be just as dark as the rest of the building if not for the floor-to-ceiling panel of windows directly opposite the door. The blinds are shut because Ben’s not a total idiot, but streetlamps and spotlights filter through enough for an Ordinary to see comfortably. There are a few more bodies in here, not all of them in uniform this time, but the clean kills definitely stopped in the hall. Blood is pooled in the carpet, sprayed across desktops and dripping down the paint.

Alec feels his eyebrows rise high, wondering what changed as Ben took cover in this room. Could be that he finally bothered to grab a weapon off one of his victims. Could be because somebody looked at him cross-eyed. Alec doesn’t pretend to know how his twin’s mind works.

Ben’s attention is fixed on the wall—more specifically, the line of trembling office workers-cum-hostages crouched down against the wall. The back of his head and a small part of his profile is visible from where Alec is standing, backlit by the glow from outside. He looks every bit the maniac, waving a gun around when one of the hostages whimpers too loudly, twitching irritably and muttering to himself.

Alec’s stealthy, of course he is, he was raised on stealth, but he’s still a little disappointed that Ben hasn’t yet noticed the breach.

He announces himself with a sharp knock on the open door. "Is this a private party or can anyone join?"

A few of the hostages gasp, and Ben's head snaps up, face a bruised mess from their earlier disagreement. "Alec," he says, body locking up tight. "What are you doing here?"

Alec can't help but smirk. Ben sounds so put out, a little betrayed but like he knows he's going to forgive Alec anyway and isn't that just the most annoying thing.

"I think the better question is: what are you doing here?" He looks around again, awed at the shitstorm Ben's managed to get himself caught in. Crazy or not, it's not easy for a transgenic to screw themselves over so thoroughly. Unless, of course, they're actually trying to screw themselves over. "This your idea of climbing the clocktower with a sniper rifle or what?"

"No," Ben says quickly. "I wasn't. I just." He shrugs, a jerky, defeated flailing of his hands and, like a petulant child, says, "They started it."

Alec cocks a brow.

"I wasn’t done talking to you," Ben begins, and goes on to confirm Alec’s suspicions that he’d come after him when he fled the tunnel, ran straight into a busy intersection and almost got run down by a minivan, which led to a group of pedestrians recognizing him and letting out a war cry before chasing him across town. It didn’t take long for the cops to catch on, and, running low on steam and recalling the basement here is one of those that leads back underground, Ben finally risked ducking into this building.

Only to be immediately assaulted by overzealous security guards armed with stun batons.

"I couldn’t," Ben says, faltering. He doesn’t look contrite, he looks furious, and Alec frowns. "The shock. I don’t like that. I had to make them stop."

Alec nods in understanding. Manticore was fond of their tasers and stun guns, and he knows all too well the utter helplessness that comes with a million volts of electricity coursing through his body and lighting all his senses up with white-hot pain.

"They were stupid, at least," Ben goes on, still sounding unrepentant, which is a far cry from the guy who was pleading with him mere hours ago to help him be a better person. "They didn’t know I would recover so fast. Got lazy and started patting each other on the back. The cops came, and then I—"

He waves his gun around to indicate the bodies, completely ignoring how his sudden movements are making his hostages whine and scoot away. Alec bypassed the lobby on his way up, but he can imagine what kind of massacre Ben left down there when he struck back.

"I couldn’t think. I just reacted. Next thing I knew there were cops everywhere and people screaming and they were blocking the way down so I had to go up. And now I have a headache," he finishes, rubbing at his temple like that last thing is the worst part.

"Well," Alec says. "That all sounds very traumatizing but I hope you haven’t totally cracked yet because it’s about to get a lot worse."

"What do you mean?"

Alec shrugs. "The hostages are a good stalling tactic but it won’t hold out for long. White loves his body counts. He’s probably having an orgasm right now, but the more innocent corpses he can blame on us evil freaks, the better."

Ben stares at him blankly, and it hits Alec that his twin’s never had the displeasure of meeting the sadistic bastard.

"He’s a bad guy," Alec explains.

"Like me?" Ben asks, and Alec frowns.

"No. Trust me, he’s way more psychotic than you could ever hope to be. There are snakes."

"Oh." Confusion is plain on Ben’s face but he doesn’t ask. "So he wants us all dead," he says instead. "Why is he still alive?"

It’s an honest question. Whatever else Ben is, he’s a trained assassin first and foremost, and Alec can see how it makes zero sense to him that someone who poses such a huge threat is still breathing. Alec is both weirdly charmed and disconcerted that the idea of a non-transgenic eluding them this long hasn’t even occurred to Ben. He misses having that kind of blissful ignorance.

"Long story," Alec says, moving on. "We can talk about Ames White and the many ways he should die later. We need to get some kind of plan together here."

"The basement," Ben repeats, low, so the hostages don’t overhear him. "If we can get down there we can lose everyone, easy. There’s more than just old subway tunnels. There are tunnels people forgot about even before the Pulse."

"How is it you know them so well? I haven’t been here that long, so you can’t have been here long enough to discover and map out a bunch of secret passageways."

"I was here before."

"Old hunting grounds?" Alec guesses, and Ben’s mouth twists up as he looks away.

Alec slumps against the door frame a little, more than tired, more than annoyed that he kinda wants to apologize for that remark.

One of the hostages—a balding man with a crooked tie—seems to sense some kind of opportunity now that Alec’s here to distract Ben, and chooses that moment to surge up and lunge at him with a stapler.

Alarmed, Alec hobbles across the room as fast as his stupid, malfunctioning body will allow. Barely makes it in time to knock the guy on his ass while knocking Ben’s wrist away with his bad arm. Ben’s gun fires uselessly at the ceiling as Alec bites back a cry, clutching at his shoulder.

"What the hell, Alec?" shouts Ben, pushing him away.

"What did I just say about body counts?" Alec manages, stumbling back and still keeping his shoulder in a tight grip in case his arm decides to fall off. Fuck.

He glares at the bald guy, who pales, immediately drops the stapler and shrinks back toward the wall.

"You're hurt," Ben realizes, voice matter of fact but he actually does look a little concerned.

"I'm fine."

Ben nods, taking Alec's word for it or maybe just too uncertain of where they stand with each other to push it. But when Alec starts limping around in search of a new wall to hold him up, too slowly and hissing through his teeth, it takes him about five seconds to reconsider.

"You’re not," Ben says firmly, pulling a chair over and pushing Alec down into it. "Don’t move."

Alec wants to protest but that would lead to standing again to prove his point, and it all seems like so much effort.

Ben disappears into the hallway. Alec hears him rummaging recklessly through another office before he returns with a first aid kit in hand. When he kneels in front of Alec and pulls out an Ace bandage and a pair of tweezers, Alec barely refrains from scoffing.

"There’s no way I’m letting you dig around my insides with that."

Ben glances up briefly, unconcerned. "Your shoulder’s probably started healing already. Longer you wait, the more it’s gonna suck."

Alec’s gaze slides pointedly back over to the huddle of civilians, most of them trying to make themselves vanish into the wall, a few of them glaring hatefully at him and undoubtedly picturing his slow, painful demise. Last thing he needs is to show any more weakness, or traumatize them further with all the screaming he’s inevitably in for. "It can wait."

"Fine." Ben forages through the desk behind Alec and comes up with a pair of scissors, cutting up the leg of Alec’s soaked jeans without bothering to ask. He wrinkles his nose up, pulling his hand back to glare at it suspiciously. "Do I wanna know why you smell like pee?"

Alec feels his face go hot. "I don’t wanna talk about it."

Ben grunts a little in disgust, wiping his hand off on the carpet, then stands. "Take those off," he says as he starts divesting one of the dead guards of his pants.

Alec thinks of complaining about Ben’s total disregard for the dead man’s dignity, but he kinda doubts the guy deserves much dignity and it’d take too much explaining for Ben to understand his reasons, anyway. Besides, he really does stink and it’s not like the guy needs them anymore.

He starts unbuckling his belt.

"Here, let me," Ben offers, helping to tug Alec’s ruined pants down his legs and then tightly bandaging his knee.

Once he’s in drier, cleaner pants, Ben grabs the edge of Alec’s shirt and yanks it up sideways, freeing his good arm.

"Little warning would be nice," Alec grouches, wriggling to help him get it over his head.

"If I warn you, you’ll just argue with me. I’ve picked up a few things about you by now."

Alec winces as Ben works the shirt off his injured shoulder, dried blood making the cloth stick to the wound. "I guess stalking is handy that way," he says through grit teeth.

Ben ignores the comment, tosses the shirt to the floor and cleans off as much blood as he can with a bottle of water and some disinfectant before wrapping it all up with another bandage.

Alec squirms uncomfortably as Ben examines his handiwork, mostly by poking at him. He smacks Ben’s hand away. "You think we can escape now or is playing doctor so much fun you wanna stay here and wait for your very own bullethole to stick your fingers in?"

"I still haven’t heard anything resembling an actual plan for getting downstairs," Ben points out, straightening up. "If you’ve thought of something, I’m all ears."

"What, is killing your way down there not good enough anymore?"

"We can do it that way," Ben says carefully, edging along the wall to peek out the window. "But the risk is pretty high. Especially with you hurt. I only killed my way up here in the first place because I didn’t have a choice."

"There’s always a choice," Alec argues, but given all he’s been through today, it lacks feeling. "You see anything?"

"Yeah," says Ben. "I see a SWAT truck pulling in."

"Shit."

"We can take them," Ben says, watching Alec like he might fall apart as he stands to come and join him.

"Maybe," says Alec, thinking fast. He wants to smack himself as soon as an idea forms, because he should’ve thought of it so much earlier. Being around Ben this much in one day has played all kinds of merry hell on his brain. "He’ll clear the building."

"What?"

"White. He’ll clear the cops out of the building. He’s always careful about anyone who might have a conscience seeing too much and living to tell the tale, and it’s not like he can just execute the entire police force when he’s done in here. They’ll guard the exits, yeah, but they’ll be outside."

"So we take out SWAT and run like hell?"

"Yes—wait, no. No, we should go now. Before they come up. They’ll have cleared it by now."

"You sure about that?"

"No." Alec kinda wants to stomp his foot. They could still make a run for it and see how far they can get, but choosing their own battleground promises better odds than being caught by surprise in a narrow corridor with no viable escape routes. "Dammit."

"It’s not that big a deal, is it? More cops to kill but—"

"They won’t be cops, haven’t you been listening? White will send his people. He’ll send Familiars."

Ben's brow furrows in frustration. "I don’t know what that means."

"It means it won’t be easy," Alec explains, glancing around. His gaze settles on the hostages again as he says, "They’re freaks just like us. Except not. Because they want to exterminate everyone who isn’t them," barely pausing for breath before making an executive decision.

"You and you." Alec inclines his chin at a woman in a pencil skirt sitting at the edge of the group, and a man wearing thick glasses towards the middle. They seem to holding it together better than the rest, flinching only a little when he singles them out. "I want each of you to take a group," he tells them before anyone can start freaking out too much. "I want you to leave now, as quickly and quietly as you can. Stay low, don’t draw attention to yourselves. You see anyone in a SWAT vest, you hide from them. They aren’t your friends in here. Once you’re out, feel free to throw yourselves at the nearest police officer you find. But not until then."

He lets that sink in before repeating the most important part, "SWAT: bad, Chicago PD: good, understand?"

He steps back a little as the hostages begin to rise, finally grasping that he’s serious about letting them go, but he’s still close enough to keep them fidgeting anxiously in place. He stares pointedly, waiting for one of them to figure out the question’s not rhetorical.

Jerkily, the woman nods.

"I’m not expecting you to trust me," Alec adds, "I know you don’t, but a little extra caution never hurt, right?"

Another nod, though this one’s a little slower.

Still not totally satisfied but figuring he’s done as much as he can in the time they have, Alec jerks his head at the door. "Go."

And they do, fumbling and tripping over each other, the complete opposite of stealth as everyone ignores any organizational attempts by Alec’s appointed group leaders, and hurls themselves at the exit. Alec sighs—he really doesn’t know why he keeps trying—but his hopes are lifted a little when the guy in glasses speaks up firmly in the hallway, working to inject calm and little more order.

Letting out a slow breath, Alec resigns himself to the fight, much as it pisses him off to have to face White’s muscleheads in his condition. He feels even more stupidly vulnerable without a shirt but there’s no time to fix that.

He turns back to Ben, who’s watching him dispassionately, appearing almost bored.

"They're strong," Alec says, checking his ammo, and Ben perks up at the official tone of his voice. "Stronger than us. But we're faster. They don't feel pain so don't rely on that to slow them down."

He starts collecting more of the dead’s discarded weapons. Wonders briefly if he should barricade the doors that connect to other offices but decides having multiple exits is more important than multiple breaches.

"Don't let them draw you into a fistfight if you can help it. They hate us and they're twisted as hell, so they prefer beating us to death over shooting. They'll use guns as a last resort which is why we need to shoot first. Go for legs, arms, wherever you can aim that isn't covered in bulletproof armor. Disable them as much as you can before getting close."

"It's not like I'm new at this," Ben sneers.

"Yeah, you kind of are," Alec snaps. "They're not helpless normals you can chase through the woods."

Ben looks like he wants to say something particularly scathing in reply, but outside, the crowd lets out a cheer that cannot mean anything good, and his attention is officially diverted.

"How about you do the shooting," he says, not so much a suggestion as an order, at which Alec makes a face. Ben follows it up by shoving Alec across the room and then trying to push him up onto the ledge near the ceiling. "Disabling for the disabled. There's your perch."

"I'm not freakin’ disabled," says Alec, resisting. "I can fight."

"Maybe. But I'd rather you didn't."

Alec stops, eyeing Ben skeptically. This Ben is not the Ben he’s been dealing with all day. He’s much bossier, for one thing, less fragile-seeming and entirely too excited at the prospect of a new killing challenge. He considers asking if Manticore accidentally gave him a split personality with all that carving they did, but thinks better of it. There’s something off here. Alec files it away and resolves to pay closer attention.

"I'm glad you think you're in charge, considering you're the one who got us into this mess."

"Which is exactly why I should be the one to get us out," Ben says.

When Alec still refuses to budge, Ben gives him a dark look.

Then he kicks him.

Pain floods Alec's leg and he folds faster than a house of cards in a windstorm. "Fuck!" he gasps, grabbing his knee. Ben moves closer and Alec's gun is up before he can blink. "Touch me again and I will shoot you in the face."

Ben rolls his eyes and backs off, hands up in surrender. "Was just gonna help you up, but have it your way. You're no good to me crying on the floor." He points at the ledge again. "At least from up there you can back me up."

Before Alec can protest any more, heavily-armored shadows appear behind the blinds, climbing the side of the building like a cliff face.

Ben flicks a look across the room, eyes widening a little. He turns back to Alec. His scowl hardens. Alec returns the scowl but, out of time, ultimately gives in and scrambles up to the ledge. He consoles himself with the thought that he can jump back down and prove Ben wrong as soon as he realizes how screwed he is trying to take on Familiars by himself. Though, really, it'd serve Ben right for Alec to just sit up here and watch him die horribly.

The slightest whisper of sound from the hallway, and Alec whips his head around. He brings his guns up, glancing over quickly to make sure Ben is ready.

Can’t hold onto his resentment when he notices how close Ben has gotten to the windows.

"Hey, maybe you shouldn’t—"

Ignoring him, Ben walks across the room towards one of the desks. Cocks his head at it. Then he leans down and shoves.

The desk goes crashing through the centermost panes, a handful of Familiars knocked backwards in a shower of tangled blinds and broken glass. Some of the ropes snap, their riders plummeting back to the street. The ones whose ropes are intact are stuck dangling and grasping for a new hold on the building.

Alec spends a split-second jealously wondering why he didn't think of that, and then he shoots the first Familiar to make it inside, forcing the man back a few steps. He shoots him again and again, forcing him back even further until he runs out of floor and stumbles out into thin air, dropping to join his friends below.

The others come pouring in, twenty or so of them, some through the windows and some through the office door behind them. There’s a noticeable air of surprise when they see they’re dealing with two transgenics instead of just one but it doesn’t trip them up at all. They advance without hesitation.

Alec focuses on taking out extremities and keeping one eye on his twin for inevitable failure.

Easier said than done.

He’s allowed mere seconds to watch Ben launch himself into motion before a pair of Familiars notice Alec monopolizing the only high ground there is. They charge. Alec shoots. The bullets slam into their vests and tear through thighs and biceps but they don’t stop.

Pulling his legs up, Alec keeps shooting. He kicks out when they reach for him, his boot glancing off a helmet and knocking it askew. He kicks at that one again, harder. The helmet jolts and blood gushes from the Familiar’s nose.

"Mutant filth," the Familiar spits, locking a hand around Alec’s ankle. He twists like he expects it to come popping right off. Alec feels a sharp twinge of warning; his ankle telling him that it just might do that.

Alec grunts and kicks out with his bad leg, adrenaline masking the pain a little. He squeezes his trigger and plants a bullet in the Familiar’s forehead. Swings a gun around just as the other Familiar climbs up onto a chair.

Before he can fire off another shot, a knife plants itself behind the guy's ear, sticking out of the small gap between his helmet and collar. The Familiar falls, lifeless. Alec looks back at Ben, who's already moving on to the next pair of unlucky snake-worshippers stupid enough to get in his way, shooting both of their throats out.

He seems to have taken Alec's tip about speed to heart, blurring all over the room and barely stopping between kills. It goes on like that for long seconds, and Alec doesn't know why he's surprised. All this time calling Ben all kinds of crazy in his head and it should've occurred to him before now to notice how successful he's been at it. There is a method to his madness—reasoning and motivation all twisted up, sure, but that doesn't affect how precisely lethal his execution is.

Distracted with a new threat trying to climb up toward him, Alec doesn’t shout a warning in time when Ben makes the mistake of barreling straight at a Familiar who has obviously been laying in wait for that exact thing.

The Familiar sidesteps at the last minute, arm darting out. His forearm catches Ben in the neck and Ben’s momentum betrays him, snapping his head and then the rest of him backwards.

Alec has already abandoned his perch by the time Ben lands flat on his back, breath punched out of him. Ben tries to get back up but wavers, gasping to get air into his abused throat. He sprawls sideways and rolls out of Alec’s path just as Alec plows into the Familiar full-force.

They go rollicking away from Ben and straight into the nearest wall. Luckily, it’s not Alec’s head that takes the hit, but their limbs are tangled together and he’s stuck wrestling around with the Familiar, trying to get free.

Alec feels a hand claw at his hair. His head is wrenched backwards. The tendons in his neck strain and his eyes can’t find anything but the ceiling. The Familiar scrabbles for a better angle, a surer grip, and all it’ll take is one quick twist for Alec to be out of the fight. He swallows hard and gropes around desperately, finds the edge of the Familiar’s visor and smacks it open. Grits his teeth as he blindly brings his gun around and pulls the trigger.

The hand goes slack and Alec slumps in relief.

It’s short-lived.

He doesn’t need to turn and check on Ben; the sudden explosion of gunfire is a clear sign he’s recovered. But there’s too much of it. Ben can’t possibly be getting that many shots off at once.

Alec dives for the floor and yanks the Familiar’s body over him like a blanket when the wall behind him is suddenly punched full of bulletholes. The body jerks as it absorbs the hits meant for him and Alec tries not to feel smothered under its weight. Hopes Ben found cover before the Familiars decided it was time to actually bring guns to the gunfight.

As soon as the bombardment dies down, Alec shoves the body aside and springs to his feet.

The back of his head erupts with pain and before he knows what’s happening he’s on the floor again. The toe of a boot collides with his cheek. Blood bursts across his tongue, white agony temporarily stealing his vision. Another kick, this one to his temple, and the sounds around him go wobbly. He wants to believe the little noise he can make out is part of a distant struggle, that it means Ben is still in this thing, but he doesn’t get to find out. He’s too disoriented to react before another hand is on him, prying his weapons away and dragging him out into the hallway by his hair.

"What is with you fuckers and hair-pulling?" Alec snarls, dazedly writhing and kicking.

His vision reassembles itself enough to see the jackass grinning down at him in savage glee. "Ames has really been looking forward to getting reacquainted," the Familiar says. "Didn’t think we’d be lucky enough to bring you to him alive."

"Yeah, great." Alec bares his teeth. His heart flutters wildly in his chest. "I think I should change first, though," he grunts, struggles some more. The guy’s grip is really very solid. "Not sure this is the right outfit for meeting sadistic cult leaders. I should at least put on a shirt."

The Familiar’s fingers tighten in his hair, jerking his head roughly and smacking it into the wall as they turn a corner.

Alec squeezes his eyes shut against the vicious spike of agony and slurs out, "Maybe something in snakeskin."

That earns him another violent jolt, made even worse as he lands on the stairs and the Familiar continues to drag him relentlessly onward.

The murmur of activity from outside grows louder, and the office they’ve left behind seems disturbingly silent in comparison. Alec twists and claws at the Familiar’s arm, scoring bloody grooves into the skin. The guy doesn’t even blink and it’s possible that Alec is maybe beginning to panic a little bit. Ben may not be his favorite person but not knowing if he’s okay freaks him out almost as much as coming face to face with Ames White again.

Fucking White.

Fuck that.

Alec kicks up his struggles, contorting himself into crazy positions and finally managing to get his ankle hooked around the Familiar’s shin. The Familiar stumbles a little but doesn’t spill down the stairs like Alec hoped. He doesn’t let go, either. He catches himself on the railing and drives his boot into Alec’s lower back. Alec bites down on the scream that tries to tear out of him. The Familiar does it again and Alec feels sure one more hit will paralyze him but he doesn’t stop fighting. He takes a cue from all the whackjobs he’s had surrounding him all day and goes berserk, thrashing and twisting and lashing out wildly at any body part he can reach. He’d rather be beaten to death than see the end of this staircase.

"You little mongrel," the Familiar squawks, trying to keep his hold on Alec and dance out of his whirlwind-like path at the same time. He seems to have caught onto Alec’s plans of self-destruction because he’s not retaliating. "You might as well save it. There’s nothing—"

An animalistic howl from above pierces through their little skirmish. A blur goes sailing past them, down the steps, the thunder of boots close behind, and Ben’s voice calls back, "Incoming!"

Heart soaring, Alec curls himself into a tight ball just before a fresh storm of bullets is unleashed. The Familiar’s grip on him disappears. He hears the thump of the body hitting the stairs, taken down in a hail of friendly fire. Feet stampede right past him, completely ignoring the vulnerable enemy in their midst.

Ben must have really pissed them off, Alec thinks, and then he gets with the program and lunges up to snap the neck of a straggler. His head swims and he has to grab onto the railing to keep from tumbling down the steps.

There’s a gun down there.

Alec plucks the weapon from the dead Familiar’s belt and smoothly reinserts himself into the action.

He takes careful aim from where he stands, opting for precision over speed, and fires into the smaller but more lethal gaps in their SWAT uniforms. Not all of them are wearing their helmets anymore, so that’s easy enough, and before they get over their outrage at Ben enough to pay attention to Alec again, they’re mostly too late.

There aren’t many Familiars left. Ben is taking on four of them at once on the landing below but Alec can see he’s starting to flag.

He’s proven right when one Familiar lands a kick to Ben’s chest that flips him over the railing and out of sight.

"Hey!"

They whirl around to come at him but Alec’s not interested in letting them get close enough to cause his sorely abused body any more problems. He opens fire.

Runs out of ammo after the third man goes down.

"Crap," Alec whines a little, and throws himself down the stairs to meet the remaining Familiar head-on.

They both land in a chaotic heap. Alec scrambles away and thrusts his legs out, catching the Familiar’s head between his ankles. He twists sharply. The Familiar goes limp.

For a minute, there is nothing but blissful, beautiful silence.

Now seems like an excellent time to collapse and never move again. Except he hasn’t seen Ben since he took a nosedive and he should probably check into that.

"Ben?" Alec calls out, shakily pulling himself up and limping down the steps.

"I’m fine," moans Ben from somewhere down below. It sounds pretty far down, actually. Alec’s not sure he wants to keep going. "You get ‘em?"

"All dead," Alec reports. He wonders if sliding down the railing is a really terrible or only mildly bad idea. "Are you fine fine, or reporting-to-a-soulless superior fine?"

"I’m good."

He doesn’t sound remotely good. Alec sighs and continues to hobble. This is not the daring and speedy escape he had in mind when he first got here.

When he makes it all the way down to the bottom, where the staircase lets out directly into the center of the lobby and a colorful strobe of lights is flashing through the frosted glass doors that lead out into the mob, he finds Ben splayed there on the linoleum like a starfish, making no move to get up.

"Told you not to get close," Alec says, breathless, and kneels down awkwardly to assess the damage.

Ben’s lip curls up in an unamused snarl. His eyes flutter shut, like just looking at things requires way too much energy, face tense and lined with misery.

Alec feels a prickle of unwelcome concern. "Can you move?"

"Probably," mutters Ben. He cracks an eye open. "Don’t want to, though."

Alec smirks. "Too bad. I didn’t come all this way to watch you take a nap." He nudges Ben’s shoulder. "Come on, get up."

Scrunching his face, Ben does get up. He moves gingerly, sucking in quick breaths, and Alec guesses that his ribs did not fare well under that hit he took. Alec’s not in the best condition to take his weight, but that doesn’t stop him from hooking one of Ben’s arms around his shoulders to help him along.

"Look at it this way," he says as they shuffle along like a couple of old men. "We’re closer to the basement than we were twenty minutes ago. It’s like a shortcut."

"Anyone ever tell you you talk too much?" Ben growls a little, and Alec huffs out a laugh.

"Never."

Static.

It’s a sound Alec has seriously come to loathe.

A voice that is entirely too recognizable for Alec’s peace of mind crackles from the stairway over their heads, asking for a status report. Of course.

"What’s wrong?" asks Ben, eyeing him in concern as Alec stands frozen to the spot.

"There’s no way we’re gonna get up there in time to respond to that radio call, is there?"

"Not likely."

"How far is the basement?"

Ben glances ahead and his mouth thins out as he seems to realize their predicament. "Not close," he admits because, stairs or no stairs, the building isn’t exactly small. "How long do you think before they send in reinforcements?"

The crashing of glass from what seems like every floor in the building answers that question.

"You’ve got to be fucking kidding me," Alec groans. Eyes darting around, he lets go of Ben because they’re both going to have to stand on their own to get through this.

If they were both in better shape, they might make it downstairs before the new wave caught up. Even then, the Familiars would discover Ben’s little escape hatch before he and Alec could cover their trail. Then they’d be stuck in an underground maze that Alec doesn’t know very well with Familiars hot on their heels, and it’s just not an ideal scenario.

"Fuck. I’m out of ammo and I don’t see any weapons laying around down here, do you?"

Ben makes a face at the empty lobby. "They must’ve cleared out the bodies."

"No shit," Alec mutters. They are so screwed. "Goddammit."

"It’s fine," says Ben, and if Alec didn’t know any better he’d say his twin sounds excited again, that same note in his voice as before.

He actually doesn’t know any better.

"Fuck your fine," Alec growls, rage boiling up. "What the hell is wrong with you?"

Ben’s face slackens in total innocence. It’s too much innocence, really. "What do you mean?"

Alec narrows his eyes at the panic barely masked behind that expression. He opens his mouth to tell Ben exactly what he means, to pry whatever secret he’s keeping out of him if it takes all night.

And then he’s rudely reminded that he doesn’t have all night.

A bullet slams into Alec’s thigh, just above his swollen knee. His legs fold and his ass hits the floor. The pain doesn’t register right away and so he sits there, stunned and unable to believe that just happened.

"I got shot again," he mumbles, just to say it out loud.

More gunfire rains down from above. Alec looks up. Familiars are leaning over the railing on the third floor, automatic weapons aimed straight at them.

Ben dives to avoid being hit. He does a weird little flip across Alec’s lap, grabbing onto him as he goes. Next thing Alec knows they’re sprawled under the cover of the staircase and Ben barely pauses long enough to let Alec get his bearings before he’s seizing his arm and tugging.

"Get up," Ben orders. Alec stares at him. "Now." Ben tugs again, jarring his injured shoulder and wow, okay, mother of fuck, there’s the pain.

Alec struggles back to his feet, swaying a little. Ben presses into him to keep him steady and hauls Alec alongside himself, down through a hallway and away from the rapidly descending footsteps. Alec suspects they aren’t going fast enough.

"I hate this freaking day," he says.

Ben shoots him a pitying look, and somehow that’s the thing to snap him out of it.

He pushes at Ben. "I can walk."

"You really can’t."

He pulls away. Grabs onto Ben again when that proves slightly disastrous. "Yeah, okay."

"Here." Ben slides a knife into his palm and Alec closes his fingers around it gratefully.

That gratefulness disappears in the next second when Ben shoves him into a janitor's closet and says, "Stay," before slamming the door in his face.

Propped against a shelf full of cleaning supplies, Alec blinks. He tries to open the door but it’s jammed or blocked somehow from the outside.

"What. The. Fuck," he says to no one.

At full strength, Alec could bust out of here, no problem, but clearly, he’s nowhere near full strength, so he mostly gets to fume silently as he listens to the rowdy brawl breaking out in the hallway. If they survive this, he is going to kick Ben’s ass so hard.

It’s embarrassing, how long it takes him to notice there’s a little square window in the middle of the door, that he can see and not just hear, and then he realizes he might be suffering a minor case of blood loss. It’s so dark in here, or maybe his vision is on the fritz again, who knows, but he manages to scrounge up some cleaning cloths and ties them together. Tying them around his leg is a little more difficult, and he blinks back tears as he pulls them tight.

"Jesus," he breathes out when that’s all over with.

The gunshots startle him so badly he swears he almost has a heart attack.

They really shouldn’t, he’s been dealing with the sounds forever, but somehow he hadn’t noticed the lack of them until they came back. He straightens as best he can, balancing on one leg and pressing his face against the glass to see outside.

He sees the Familiars first, of course. They’re worse than cockroaches, just goddamn everywhere. They aren’t trussed up in full SWAT gear, Alec notes, but it’s about the only good news there is because they are armed to the teeth and obviously aren’t as hesitant as the first bunch to use weapons.

Dread creeps up on him, gaining momentum the longer he goes without spotting Ben. But then, yep. There he is, holding up a bloodied bulletproof vest like a shield as he charges recklessly into the barrage.

Alec loses sight of him again, but he can hear the sounds of utter destruction going on and deals with his imagination running wild until there’s something else to look at.

The next time he sees Ben, he’s holding a pistol in each hand. His back slams against the door and Alec gets his hopes up, waiting for Ben to get over this weird overprotective crap, let him out and arm him up properly. Ben’s shoulders flatten against the glass as he raises both barrels. Shots are fired. Ben drops. Ben jumps back up. Ben disappears again.

Alec huffs.

The blasts that follow are relentless, and Alec’s not surprised. There’s a transgenic backed into a corner with a gun and little to no armor protecting his attackers, who outnumber him by a pretty staggering amount. "Take no prisoners" is pretty much the name of the game here.

After what seems like forever, the gunfire tapers off. Alec decides it’s because everyone’s running low on ammo and not because of any other reason that he refuses to accept when he’s trapped in a tiny space with only a knife and a dirty mop to defend himself with.

He lets out the breath he was holding when a shape blurs by the window. It blurs back the other way and he can just make out Ben, who is visibly losing whatever gumption he was using to keep his own pain at bay. He’s bleeding.

Alec thumps irritably at the door but Ben doesn’t acknowledge it. "Getting shot is my thing," he says anyway, like he can scold Ben into not doing that again. There’s going to be no one left to patch them up if they’re both plugged full of lead.

Familiars pour in from both sides and swarm around Ben like hornets. Alec pounds harder on the door, which turns out to be a bad idea. Dizziness smacks into him like a tidal wave. He clings to the doorknob for dear life. It’s hot in here, his heart is racing, and he might actually throw up.

He wants out now.

"Open this fucking door!" he shouts uselessly.

Ben can’t open the fucking door. Ben is very busy trying not to die, the dumbass. Alec didn’t go through all the trouble of infiltrating this shithole to suffocate in a goddamn closet.

His mild hysteria subsides a little when Ben manages to break free of the attack circle. He’s not down for the count yet, and so Alec watches avidly, urging Ben to victory through sheer force of will. At the same time, something else niggles at him, and he thinks that since he’s stuck here he might as well take advantage of the opportunity he’s been afforded.

Ben’s a lot more protective of his exposed underbelly this time around, hunched over and angling his body to keep himself small. What he’s lost in fluidity, however, he makes up for in bloody brutality.

When one overly confident asshole gets right up in Ben’s face to sneer at him as they grapple with each other, Ben promptly stabs him in the eye. When he gets caught in another Familiar’s hold, arms pinned at his sides, Ben doesn’t miss a beat as he lunges at the guy’s jugular with his teeth. He wields a knife like an extension of himself, drives the blade deep into vulnerable flesh and paints the walls in arterial spray but, despite his ferocity, Ben doesn’t seem as pissed as Alec had expected.

At first glance his expression is all business, no real emotion except maybe some eagerness to complete the mission for the sake of expediency. It's not until Alec focuses a little harder that he knows that's a lie.

There's no hesitation. No inner struggle or crisis of conscious about whether or not he's making the right calls. Mouth smeared bright red and quirked up ever so slightly at one corner, Ben's eyes are blazing with the thrill of it, with the surety of purpose. Like he knows without a doubt he was made to be this and he's enjoying every second.

And that right there is when Alec figures it out.

He's been fucking played.

Alec wakes to the unpleasant feeling of blood rushing to his head. The world is bouncing in a kind of lazy, haphazard and very much upside-down way.

And that’s Ben’s ass in his face.

Ben’s weaving around like he’s had a whole bar to drink, Alec curled rather lopsidedly over his shoulder and dangerously close to sliding off, and there’s a trail of blood behind them, little drops and huge smears marking Ben’s zigzagging passage. They’re in the tunnels now, he can tell that plainly enough from the thick darkness and stale earth smells, but the memory of everything that must’ve happened after being trapped in the janitor’s closet is sketchy.

He vaguely recalls a rickety little utility ladder, crawling through the ceiling and then maybe falling on his head. There’s a whole lot of nothing after that, so, apparently, he passed out like a total jackass and, aside from being mortified, he’s also got to deal with the prospect of Ben thinking he’s easy prey.

Alec writhes weakly, the rest of his body waking up and bringing all the bright, ugly pain with it. "Lemme down," he slurs, careful, so as not to encourage his stomach to try hurling itself out through his mouth.

Startled, Ben stumbles a little, his unburdened shoulder thumping hard against the wall. He let out an anguished whine, knees crashing gracelessly into the dirt, and Alec does slide off, then.

"Christ," Alec moans, flopping over onto his side. His skull feels fit to shatter any second. He glares over at Ben, but his ire immediately shifts to worry when he sees how pale Ben is.

He’s shiny with sweat and breathing too raggedly, eyelids drooping as he fights to not fall face-down and stay that way. Alec’s stomach clenches at the sheer amount of blood soaking through Ben’s clothes, but it’s not worry for Ben so much as for himself. Knowing what he knows now, Ben deserves nothing more than for Alec to leave him here to bleed out in the dark, alone and forgotten, but Alec isn’t familiar enough with the tunnels to navigate them on his own. Like it or not, he needs Ben alive and generally upright.

Alec scrambles to sit up. His own pain is nothing to scoff at, but it doesn’t take him long to realize he’s not quite as bad off as he remembers.

A cursory investigation of himself reveals that the wound in his shoulder has been reopened, but it’s also been meticulously cleaned and rebandaged. Alec has a very hazy, fever-dream type of recollection of being viciously jarred out of beautiful oblivion and screaming his throat raw while his shoulder felt like it was being pried apart with razors, a snapshot mercifully cut short by the blackout that returned to claim him. Ben must have finally decided to dig the bullet out while Alec was being all cooperative and unconscious. His thigh looks about the same, though the bullet had gone straight through, so Ben didn’t have to go rooting around for that one.

Ben blinks fast and pouts like he’s just been awoken from his afternoon catnap, batting Alec’s hands away when he tries to get at his injuries to see exactly how bad they are. "We have to get farther," Ben pants out, struggling to get a one-handed grip on the wall so he can pull himself back to his feet. He’s pretty much failing. "We need," he glares at the wall like it’s doing this to him to be spiteful, "more distance."

Alec hesitates. He’s not sure how far they’ve come, obviously, or if White and the police have had enough time to figure out there are no more live bodies in the building, but Ben’s not going to last much longer like this. Then again, if they’re too near the entrance, and Ben makes any … distressed noises, that won’t do them any favors, either.

"Fine," Alec sighs, standing. He wobbles a little but gets himself sorted out after a minute. Leans down to hook his arms under Ben’s shoulders to haul him up. He’s not gentle about it, resolutely ignoring Ben’s pained whimpers as he shuffles them both around until they’re in a position better suited for walking.

There’s nothing but the sluggish drag of their footsteps and Ben’s harsh breathing for a while. Ben is tense and trembling a little on Alec’s arm, but it doesn’t all seem to be physical discomfort. He keeps shooting Alec these hurried, uneasy glances out of the corner of his eye when he thinks Alec’s not paying attention, and it doesn’t take long for Alec to get fed up.

"What?"

Ben’s whole body jerks, head dropping to stare fixedly at the ground. One foot in front of the other, slow, slow, so freaking slow, and finally he says, "You’re mad?" voice rising a little at the end like he can’t help but make it a question even though he seems to know for a fact it’s true.

It’s not like Alec’s keeping it a secret. His face hurts from scowling so hard. "You’re surprised?"

Ben licks his lips slowly. "I don’t," he pauses, pulling in another shaky breath. "I don’t know what I did?" Another statement turned question, his expression all boyish innocence and a little fear, and that’s just.

It’s downright galling, is what it is. Ben is un-fucking-believable. Alec stares at him.

Ben keeps looking at his feet.

"You’re one conniving son of a bitch," Alec bites out, turning his attention back to the darkness ahead. Among other things, he’s pretty sick and goddamn tired of watching Ben lie to his face with his own face.

Ben’s voice, when it comes, is thin and high. Alec refuses to be moved. "What?"

"All that nonsense before? All your ‘Oh, Alec, you’re so good and noble, and I’m a bad, bad man, please teach me your ways?’ You were full of shit." Alec clenches his teeth so hard the tension knifes up through his jaw and births a new world of pain in his skull. His fingers tighten around the wrist he’s using to keep Ben’s arm around his shoulder. Ben flinches with the intensity of it but Alec doesn’t let up. "You don’t care about doing what’s right. Sure, maybe you want help blending in a little better because you have that escaped mental patient vibe going on. But being less of a murderer? That’s not what you want at all."

Ben’s breathing gets even more erratic, and he starts actively trying to pull away. Almost immediately, though, he slams into reverse when the battle becomes more about not falling over.

Alec hangs on, stubborn and becoming steadily more pissed off. "If you pass out right now, so help me, I will leave your ass."

There’s a sharp inhale like Alec just suckerpunched him before Ben steadies himself, drawing in slower, more deliberate breaths. "What," he starts. Stops. "What is it you think I want, then?"

"A partner," says Alec, fairly sure he’s figured this part out well enough. "You only said that crap because you thought it was the only way I’d agree to hang out with you."

"What can I say," Ben sneers, total one-eighty, and Alec is startled into looking over at him again. He’s eyeing Alec like he’s some dumb, slow creature who’s lucky he’s been allowed to live this long. "Your awesomeness is irresistible like that."

Alec recognizes enough of himself in his twin to know a defense mechanism when he sees it. Still, he has to marvel at how quickly and effortlessly Ben has switched gears. "You’re a lot more devious than I gave you credit for."

Ben shrugs, a little of that derision giving way to something like relief. Alec guesses it must be exhausting, all that pretending. It’s not like he’s never had to do it for a mission, but he wasn’t wrestling with his own insanity at the same time. Doesn’t make him any less angry about it. "It’s not just me, anyway. You don’t like being alone either."

Alec almost laughs outright. He tempers it enough that it comes out as only a mildly contemptuous snort. "If I was that desperate for a sidekick there are about a thousand other people I’d pick over you."

"That is patently untrue."

Ben sounds so smug about it that Alec can’t help but issue the challenge: "Enlighten me."

"Anyone stuck with you would be doomed. That’s how you think, isn’t it?" says Ben, and it’s right about then that Alec’s idle thoughts of throwing Ben on the ground and leaving him there start to merit more serious consideration. "That being around you is some kinda punishment? Being around me is worse, though, and you believe it’s better if you’re the one being punished."

Alec is stunned enough by that answer to fail to come up with a decent rebuttal. The fact that Ben seems to know him so well when it’s become painfully clear he knows so little about Ben infuriates him almost as much as it scares the hell out of him.

"Tell me I’m wrong."

"You’re wrong," Alec obliges him. Then he not-so-accidentally trips a little bit, jarring Ben violently enough that he chokes back a yelp. "And an asshole."

They don’t have much to say to each other after that.

-:-

They hobble along in tense silence for what feels like forever. Ben seems to have settled into a nice little sulk but he’s given up trying to get Alec to talk about his feelings, which is just awesome as far as Alec is concerned.

Everything is awesome.

They’re far, far away from the bad men and their bad guns and all the bad weather, and they’ve made some decent headway, Alec thinks, because he’s thinking positively. He doesn’t have a watch or any kind of view of the sky to help him judge time very effectively, and the tunnel looks the same as it did a million miles ago, but if he doesn’t look on the bright side of something after the day he’s had, he’s going to join Ben in the Brotherhood of Lost Marbles.

"Alright, pit stop," Alec says decisively when they’ve reached the point where Ben isn’t so much walking as being dragged around like a carcass.

They’ve also reach a fork in the road, so to speak, the tunnel branching off in three different directions, and Alec needs Ben’s input for this part.

Ben doesn’t appear altogether with it anymore, though. His eyes are fully closed now, skin pale as winter and almost as cold, though he does mumble some kind of response to let Alec know he heard him. It might be a protest but if Ben’s going to be all incoherent then Alec gets to interpret it however he likes.

Alec lowers him so that’s he’s sitting propped up against the crumbling wall. "Hey." He pats at Ben’s cheek, and Ben’s eyes flutter open briefly before crashing shut again. "We talked about naptime," Alec says, giving him a firmer pat. Might be more of a slap but whatever. Ben’s eyes stay open a little longer that time. "You can’t have one until we’re well and truly fled. Come on, wake up. Tell me more about your wacky stalking hijinks."

He swallows when that gets Ben’s attention, half-lidded eyes glittering weakly in the dark and peering intently at him. Probably wasn’t the best idea to remind them both so openly that he’s stuck down here for who knows how long with a serial killer who may or may not have been lying about every single thing he’s said to him so far.

Distracting himself with his total lack of medical supplies seems the way to go, so Alec does. When Ben patched him up he evidently didn’t think to bring whatever he used along for the ride, and all Alec really has to work with are Ben’s own clothes and a pair of huge hunting knives that aren’t ideal for precise surgical procedures.

"Better than nothing," Alec declares, and proceeds to strip his twin of his jacket and shirt.

Ben doesn’t resist, doesn’t really help either, just keeps looking at him while Alec maneuvers his ragdoll limbs this way and that.

Giving into his curiosity, and hoping to make Ben quit with the creepy staring while also keeping him alert with conversation, Alec asks, "Was any of it true?"

He sets Ben’s hoodie aside carefully and tries not to choke on the overwhelming copper scent that comes wafting out into the open. Reaches for Ben’s shirt and realizes it’s a lost cause as soon as he touches it; it’s so sodden with blood it feels like it could squish apart in his hands.

It still has to come off, though, so he sucks it up and curls his fingers under the sticky hem, peeling it up slowly.

"Manticore?" Alec prods, though Ben is clearly not up for talking back. "The Blue Lady?"

It only gets more disturbing as he goes. It’s not just the starkness of so much red, red blood set against the ghostly pallor of Ben’s skin, it’s the entire state of him. Alec had thought the scars were the worst of it, that the gut shot and kaleidoscopic bruises spanning his ribcage would come in at a close second, but the way his ribs stand out—the vivid, uncompromisingly skeletal picture of what someone who is wasting away actually looks like—that’s what gets him.

"Shit," Alec breathes softly. He almost wants to feel insulted at how poorly Ben has taken care of himself. They’re identical in nearly every way, and seeing his own body in such disrepair blindsides Alec in a way he hadn’t expected. When he rifles through the hoodie’s pockets and finds the food he’d tossed Ben as a parting gift that morning, he despairs. "When’s the last time you fucking ate anything?"

He isn’t expecting a response, but Ben mumbles, "I got distracted," kind of defensively, and that doesn’t make Alec feel any better.

"Jesus. You’re so much more hopeless than I thought."

Looking at the chips and soda, Alec’s own stomach practically howls. The rate his body goes through calories is insane; he can’t imagine going days and days without something to eat. He could if he had to, he knows that, but he’d never endure it willingly, and he certainly wouldn’t forget how awesome eating is.

He unscrews the soda cap and tips it to Ben’s mouth. "Drink," he orders. "Sugar has all kinds of magical properties, trust me. You’ll be bouncing off the walls in no time."

Ben makes a face like he doesn’t see the appeal of that, but he obeys. Alec is careful, not letting too much soda drip down the sides of Ben’s mouth and go to waste, but it's not a perfect set-up they have going and Ben’s chin is an inevitable mess by the time he’s finished drinking half of it.

"Good?" he asks as Ben lets out a satisfied little sigh.

Ben nods and says, "Yeah," like he’s surprised.

Alec despairs some more. "Don’t tell me you’ve never had any."

"Not that kind. It didn’t seem like it’d be good."

"Grape is delicious," Alec assures, and takes a couple sips himself to prove the irresistible nature of it. He screws the cap back on, saving the rest, wipes Ben’s hands off as best he can and then sets him to the task of eating the chips while he busies himself shredding the hoodie into more manageable strips.

The more food he gets in him, the more Ben seems to perk up, which is both a blessing and a curse. The gunshot wounds aren’t as bad as they could be but tending to them isn’t exactly going to be a walk in the park. The slug he took in the gut is more off to the side than Alec figured, right above his hipbone, and there’s another one just over that, too close to his ribs. Neither of them looks like it was a clean shot and they’re both bleeding like crazy but they don’t appear to have hit anything vital and Ben isn’t showing signs of organ failure, so that’s something. There’s another big, unsightly gash up near his clavicle that looks like a bullet glanced off after smashing the bone underneath to smithereens. Nothing go fishing for in there, but piecing the collarbone back together is still going to be straight-up awful to deal with. Alec kind of feels bad that Ben doesn’t get to be unconscious for this like he was, then feels annoyed about feeling bad, then decides Ben inspires too many complicated feelings and he should just stop thinking and get it over with.

He’s getting ahead of himself, anyway. Ben can’t afford to lose anymore blood—Alec’s going to have to miracle a transfusion out of thin air if those holes don’t stop leaking in the next few minutes—so hacking into him with a hunting knife to retrieve the bullets isn’t feasible.

First things first, Alec fashions a sling out of some bigger strips of cloth and sets to work immobilizing the arm nearest Ben’s broken collarbone.

"It was true," Ben grunts, finally answering Alec’s earlier question to distract himself as Alec nudges at him to find better angles. "They did try to fix me."

Alec glances up to encourage him to go on, even if he's not sure he wants to hear it anymore. All it's doing right now is reminding him how betrayed he feels, and how much he hates that he can feel betrayed by someone he doesn’t even like.

"They figured out pretty quickly that it wasn't anything brain surgery and re-indoctrination could correct," says Ben. "Not all the way. I know the Lady was just an excuse," he admits, face twisting up like it's still torture after all this time to acknowledge it, "but that just left me wanting to kill indiscriminately instead of making sacrifices. They decided to try and refocus that."

"If they couldn't control their rabid attack dog they at least wanted to aim you at the right targets," Alec realizes, grimacing. "Sounds like them." For a bunch of brilliant mad scientists and head spies, Manticore's staff were never very bright when it came to knowing which projects they should just give up on. "I'm guessing it backfired."

"Kinda. I—" Ben slams his eyes shut and whimpers pretty pitifully when Alec pulls the sling tight. Alec persists because dawdling will only make it worse, tying it off so it’s pressed firmly against the wound and keeping Ben’s arm pinned so securely he’ll be lucky to feel his fingers for much longer. Ben takes a couple of steadying breaths and continues, "I mean, I am refocused. Just not how they were hoping."

"Who were they trying to get you to go after?"

"You. Us."

"Transgenics?" Alec frowns, motioning Ben into a better position for bandaging his midsection.

Ben nods, slowly scooting forward and turning sideways. "After the fire at the Seattle facility." He rests his free arm on Alec’s shoulder to get it out of the way. "I wasn't there but I overheard them complaining about all their secrets escaping into the wild and how it'd be more efficient to just wipe them out than to try for recapture. They couldn’t dumb me down enough so that I wouldn't draw the obvious conclusions, though. Killing all transgenics included me, and after they took the Lady from me," Ben’s words fade on a growl before picking back up, "I wasn't okay with self-destructing once I'd completed my mission."

"You turned on them," Alec says more than asks, flashing back to all those uniformed bodies upstairs.

"I do care, a little. Not the same way you do, and probably not as much, but." Ben hisses through his teeth, pausing to adjust to the new and undoubtedly agonizing sensation of Alec jamming a wad of cloth against the worst of the two punctures in his torso. His fingers dig into Alec’s shoulder as he breathes through it, and Alec makes quick work of wrapping it into place, tight as he can get it without damaging Ben’s ribs any more.

"I'm not interested in sparing the people who want us dead," Ben manages through the pain. I don’t care if they call me a monster." He looks at Alec pointedly and says, gentler, "We’re soldiers. It’s not our job to make it easy for them."

"I don’t need survival lessons from you," Alec snarls.

"I wasn’t implying you did."

Alec takes a beat to calm down, aware that he got little defensive there. He doesn’t need gentle reminders from Ben about what he is, is all. He knows damn well.

He goes on to repeat the process of plugging up the remaining bullethole, trying not to be rougher than he needs to just because he’s annoyed. Again. "So, when you said you didn't kill Dalton?"

"I wasn't lying about that. I never lied about any of it, I just. Left some things out," says Ben, more cautious now, like he’s tiptoeing through a minefield, and that gets Alec’s undivided attention. "I know I'm messed up, I'm not an idiot. And maybe I could learn to be ... I dunno, better somehow? I'm not totally against it. But it's not a priority. I've come to terms with what I am."

Alec doesn’t reply to that right away. He resumes tying off the last makeshift bandage and sits back, taking Ben in again. For all his subterfuge, Ben isn’t always as convincing as he thinks. If he’s come to terms with what he is, really and truly, and hasn’t just resigned himself to being some irreparable mistake, Alec will eat his own foot.

It’s not Alec’s problem to work through, though, and so he asks, "What if I can't?"

"Then you can't. I don't know what to tell you." Ben gives a one-shouldered shrug, not meeting Alec’s eyes. "I won't be happy about it but I'm not gonna force you to stay."

"And you won't stalk me anymore?"

"I didn't say that." Ben smirks shakily. "I can give you space, but I can't promise I won't check in on you from time to time. Make sure you're not starting more riots in big cities, that kind of thing."

"Bite me."

"You just need so much looking after, little brother."

Alec rolls his eyes and stands. "I hate you."

"You want to," Ben allows. "But you really don't."

Alec blinks. He’s not fond of how Ben just randomly spews out uncomfortable truths like that and he almost retracts the hand he’d halfway offered to help Ben up. He extends it against his better judgment (though, honestly, he’s not sure he has any better judgment left after all this), and Ben releases one long, miserable groan as he’s pulled to his feet. Alec steadies him with a hand on his chest, mindful of his injuries.

"So?"

"So what?"

"Which way?" Alec asks, motioning at the two unending channels of darkness in front of them, then at another, smaller tunnel to their right.

Ben looks uncertain again, more lost little psycho than evil mastermind. He's exasperatingly good at it; even now, Alec can't tell if it's an act or a genuine part of his personality that he's learned how to use to his advantage but can't always control.

"Depends."

Alec’s not in the mood for this game, so he sticks to more specific questions. He points at the smaller tunnel. "Where does that one lead?"

"Up," Ben says simply. "This one goes down. That one goes down too, but it connects to other buildings and tunnels that stretch further out to the edge of the city."

"Supplies?"

"There's an underground walkway with lots of stores through there." Ben flaps a hand at the smaller tunnel again, all kinds of grumpy about it. "Looks like they were abandoned in a hurry. Most of them still have stuff."

"This the only way?"

"It's scattered all around the Loop so there are a few ways in and out."

"Huh," Alec grunts, thinking.

He knows the choice he's being offered here. He blew his one chance of getting out of the city already, no way hijacking another car is going to work again, but if he chooses to head aboveground he could go back to retrieve the money he stashed earlier and probably find someplace else to hide until the heat dies down.

He bites his lip. "So if we keep going we can stock up closer to where we want to hole up?"

Ben's eyes go big and hopeful. "Yeah."

This has got to top the long, long list of very stupid decisions Alec's made in his life. He starts limping again, straight ahead and deeper underground. "Let's do that, then. I'm not carrying a bunch of extra weight around until I have to."

"Really?" Ben breathes out so quietly that anyone who isn’t a transgenic would’ve missed it.

Alec doesn’t turn back to give him the mocking look he deserves, but Ben gets over expecting an answer to a dumb question almost before he’s finished asking it, scrambling unsteadily to catch up.

The hush that falls as they haltingly conquer inch by excruciating inch of tunnel can’t quite be labeled comfortable this time around, but it’s not packed with as much hostility either. Alec is worn down and ready to drop and gives his brain permission to check out for a bit, while Ben seems afraid to breathe too loud for fear of ruining the fragile truce between them.

They make it to the walkway closer to where they want to be, or so Alec assumes because Ben straightens up a little from his oh-god-my-innards-are-filled-with-spikes slouch, and wearily raises a hand to point at a simple wooden door set into the wall. It's faded and cracked over time but it looks like any other door Alec has walked through, and it's not locked.

He quickly discovers that locks don't matter because it opens to a brick wall.

"Well, that's … kind of anticlimactic," he mutters, kicking halfheartedly at it.

"No, look," says Ben, coming forward to push at one of the big gray blocks in the center. There's a loud scraping sound and a little puff of cement dust as it slides inward, clattering loudly to the floor on the other side. "We can replace them when we come back through. No one will ever know we were here."

"Smart," Alec concedes, and Ben smiles dimly.

They start making a hole big enough to climb through, which turns out to lead to another basement. It's huge and empty but suspiciously free of cobwebs, and Alec is starting to get a better idea of where they are now. There's a section of abandoned retail buildings that have come under renovation and construction in the last couple of years, which means this building is likely to have signs of life—some janitorial staff, at the very least.

Ben doesn't seem too concerned with the noise, though, so Alec keeps an eye out and follows him through to another wall, and another opening. Alec can see through to the other side of this one, a rectangular space large enough to fit a car through that opens up to more darkness, blocked off with a metal sliding gate. It's chained up tight.

Or maybe not.

Ben lifts up the gate with a wince, revealing the chain to be just for show as it falls free with a clamor. Alec is reluctantly impressed and a little confused. He wonders if Ben just dedicated weeks of walking around down here to rendering all obstacles useless and disguising them. It seems like so much foresight for someone who forgets to feed himself on a regular basis.

He doesn't have the time or energy to dwell on that as Ben leads him into what is, as promised, a walkway. It reminds him of an old mall or airport: long and wide with tiled floors, defunct ceiling lights and smooth walls lined with stores and kiosks and restrooms, all of it thickly filmed with dust. Some of the stores have been hastily ransacked and picked clean, but there are plenty still stocked high with merchandise, even if they are mostly a mess.

"I'll go for food and meds, if there are any," Alec decides, because while neither of them are really up for much heavy lifting, Ben looks fit to fold under the slightest breeze and Alec wants to make sure the more crucial job is done right. "You see about finding clean clothes and a better hat." He eyes Ben critically, frowning in distaste before snatching the offending beanie off his head so he can't conveniently forget to replace it. Alec makes a mental note to find a lighter and burn it ASAP. "And maybe a cordless shaver and some batteries or something. Stuff to help you look less like a deranged hobo."

Ben pouts, rubbing self-consciously at his scarred head, and blinks slowly. His eyes are ringed a deep purple and it takes him a minute to fully register what Alec just said.

Sluggishly, he makes his way toward what appears to be a pre-Pulse souvenir shop, clumsily plucking things off the toppled racks. He finds a couple of cheap-looking duffel bags to shove his spoils into. "Have you thought about where you wanna go when we get out?" he asks on a wide yawn, clearly looking for some chit-chat to keep him awake.

Alec fills a canvas bag with junk food, heedless of the expiration dates. "Anywhere but here."

"Canada? I've heard—"

"Not Canada," Alec interrupts quickly.

"Okay," drawls Ben, confused.

"I know the rumors and I'm not interested," Alec says, then sighs, realizing his aversion to the Great White North is about ten times more complicated than before, now that he's saddled with Ben.

It’s true enough that he is very much not interested in trying to find some happy ending only to have his hopes shattered. Even if the safe haven turned out to be real, they'd probably ruin it all by looking to him for answers again. Might expect him to resume old roles and rally the troops in return for room and board. Ben is enough to deal with at one time.

Which is kinda the bigger problem.

Ben’s not exactly going to fit in, even with other transgenics. Alec considered Max one of his best friends and respected her opinions most of the time, but there are too many ex-TC residents who’ve developed an almost fanatical devotion to her and her ideals. If they find out what Ben has done, well.

It won’t be pretty, to say the least.

Thinking of Max, Alec feels something in his gut turn over, that big old bundle of guilt getting restless. He can't pretend he understands what she would want now, never seemed to be able to please her a hundred percent, but he thinks she'd want him to help Ben. That she'd be happy with that. Still—

"I should kill you." It's the first time Alec's said it aloud. It lacks the same conviction it did in his head. "For what you did to Max."

Ben stands there with his one good hand full of travel-sized deodorant and toothpaste and shampoo. He's visibly mitigating his annoyance at Alec bringing this up again but he doesn’t look worried. "She did the same for me. It only seemed fair."

That's when Alec makes the distinction. It was a gift, as far as Ben's concerned, not revenge. If Ben is capable of loving anything, Alec believes Max would be one of the few he’d deem worthy. It clicks for him, then.

"I won't do that for you," Alec decides once and for all, some of the weight falling off his shoulders as he turns back to his task. He doesn't have it in him to end anyone's suffering when he's been forced to endure it on his own for so long. If he's gotta drag broken pieces around while he chases these warped illusions of freedom and living, Ben can break his back trying to haul the load, too. Alec's all about sharing.

"I know. Me, either. I'm all out of generosity and you're kind of a dick, anyway."

Alec feels something in his chest loosen, and smirks. "I'm just getting started, big brother." Turns back around and points at a tipped-over vending machine down the corridor. "Now go get me some candy before I do something unseemly to your toiletries."