Chapter 5
The fire was out of control.
Logan watched the flames burn from his safe location, the roof of a boarded-up hotel just outside Sector seven. As far as he could see, surfaces glared orange from the reflection of the blaze, like the sunset had bled onto the city. The squealing of rats was audible even from his perch. They headed in droves to the waterfront and Logan realized with a sickening thud in his heart that soon all of Seattle would be facing the same disease. Was that Trager�s original intent? To decimate an entire city�s worth of people? Or was it his plan to merely euthanize the downtrodden? It wouldn�t take long before people realized Seattle was a deadly place to live and tried to get out while they were still healthy. Real estate would be dirt cheap and Logan knew that the government would swoop in and buy up locations for a song, then produce the miracle cure to kill the rats and purify the water. Meanwhile, millions of people would be exiled, starving, homeless refugees. They�d land on their feet, pour into places like Portland or LA, maybe slip over the border and end up in Vancouver, but it wouldn�t be home. Lucky for Logan, his contact in Portland was unfazed by the potential outbreak. Danny was an entrepreneur and would make a bundle off the misery of others, gleefully using Logan�s penthouse as a base of operations. Logan, meanwhile, would be taking up residence in a sweet little neighborhood just outside Portland, commuting a mere half hour to his new job in private computer security. With any luck, Max would agree to live with him. Danny�s house had four bedrooms and an apartment in the boathouse, plenty of floor space and storage. They could always have her siblings visit. Granted, not the whole division, but there was definitely room for a volleyball net in the backyard.
Logan shook his head. It was unconscionable of him to be planning X5 reunions while Max was down in the trenches, fighting the war. Hundreds of innocent people would die tonight in the fire he helped create. Hospitals would be full to overflowing. Thousands more would be threatened with hunger and illness after the flames receded, if they ever got under control. Sure, the whole city could burn to the ground, the Space Needle could topple over from the heat, the forest could catch fire and start a national disaster.
Logan just wanted to get Max out alive.
And Bling, and Original Cindy and anyone they cared about, and as many of Max�s siblings as cared to ditch Manticore. It was selfish, pure and simple selfishness that grated against the compassion Logan usually toted around like a merit badge. The fire was too grand to make him really care, though. The cinders in the air were from paper, trash, wood, sure, but also human flesh. He couldn�t save everyone. Not this time.
They got a good head start, though.
Eyes Only, once he got out of the body bag and back to the public, used his cell phone to mobilize the hospitals. They rallied and invaded the barricades, quickly setting up triage and putting a stop to the torture and the incinerating. People were divided into two lines, healthy and sick. The sick were taken to shelters to die with pain-free dignity and the healthy ones were let out into the city to find other places to stay. It wasn�t perfect, but it sent the Sector Police on their ears. No one knew who was in charge. It was easy for a small division of young soldiers to start lighting fires everywhere, starting what would soon turn into an unstoppable, raging inferno.
Nobody thought the fire would take so quickly, but rainy Seattle still burned. It smelled like burning rubber and wet dog. And other things Logan would not care to dwell on. Max told him not to worry, that she and the other X5s would get out of there before buildings started collapsing and trapping people, but he didn�t believe her. Mission or not, Max and her siblings wouldn�t abandon helpless people to save their own hides. Yet he waited patiently, ready with pure water, blankets, clean clothing, money, sector passes, food, and plenty of contacts in neighboring cities willing to take in young houseguests for awhile. He couldn�t be down on the ground, fighting alongside Max so he went to the high place and prayed for the fire to consume everything and leave no trace of the hideous secrets kept behind the barricades.
He waited alone. Bling and Original Cindy were driving the Aztek to Portland and planned to stay there. Bling�s wife was going to meet him there, confident he�d find a new PT job. Logan, who had ferreted out the escaped X5�s though Krit and Syl over the past year and a half, contacted Jondy and found a place for Cindy to crash. There was even a lead on a job for her, tending bar near Jondy�s self-defense studio. All Max had to do was show up, alive, unharmed, willing to leave the city, and they�d be one big happy urban family.
"X5736, reporting in," came a weak voice. Logan whirled around and saw a thin Asian girl with a long braid, her face smudged with soot. He immediately grabbed a blanket and met her halfway, wrapping it around her shoulders and leading her to the shelter he�d rigged. She gratefully accepted the cup of water he gave her and made him refill it three times before she was satisfied.
"You okay?" Logan asked, watching her realize who he was.
"You�re the dead guy in the wheelchair," Brin blurted out. "And you�re walking."
"Electronics," Logan explained, raising his pant leg and showing her the exoskeleton. "And a bulletproof vest."
"X5452 betrayed us," Brin said, scandalized. Then she got mad. "I knew it!"
"Settle down, little sister," Finn said, climbing over the side of the building and jogging towards them. His face was almost completely black, his hair wet and greasy. "If she hadn�t, we�d be on our way back to execution right now." This logic made sense to Brin and Finn turned to Logan, extending a grimy hand. "Hey man, sorry I shot you. Where�s the chair?"
"He�s got an external walking device probably powered by servo motors," Brin chimed in.
Finn put his hands on his hips and nodded his head. "Spinal cord damage?"
"It was two years ago," Logan said matter-of-factly. "There�s nothing they can do now."
"Where?" Brin asked, pouring Finn a cup of water. They both drew closer to Logan, who sighed. It was easy to provide material things, a little harder to provide a distraction for soldiers who probably needed to block firey horrors out of their perfect memories.
"Below the eighth thoracic vertebra. Six months after the accident I had some progress with an X5 blood transfusion, but my body ultimately rejected the stem cells and put me back in the chair. The exoskeleton works well enough, and I�m used to the chair."
"I bet X5452 could reengineer the spinal cord," Brin said to Finn, who nodded in agreement.
"You�re completely without feeling below the waist?" Finn asked, reaching for a blanket. "Huh. Can you achieve and/or sustain an erection? Hey, don�t look at me like that. In a lot of paralysis cases the brain is somehow able to overcome that little obstacle and if it�s true in your case, then your chances for success with genome experimentation is very good."
"Works just fine," Logan said, gritting his teeth. The two X5s talked to each other for a few minutes, tossing around words like �neuropeptide� and �physiotherapy.� "X5452," Logan interrupted them. "Otherwise known as Max? She�s not a scientist."
"She is now," Brin reported proudly. "As part of her reentry into Manticore they reengineered her brain to adapt with the forward thinking present in the X7 series. She was able to quickly pick up where the other geneticists left off, designing and producing lots of things, like getting rid of our seizure problem for good. Come to think of it, she mentioned something about researching paralytic cases. I thought it was meant for warfare, not for medical advancement, but it was probably for you. She was the one who transfused you that blood you said worked at first, wasn�t she?"
"Yeah. She was."
"Well," Finn said cheerfully, "We get out of Seattle, I�m sure she can help you. �Course, she�ll have to rebuild the lab, but I�m sure that won�t be a problem. X54� Maxie loves that genetic stuff. I bet it�s killing her to sacrifice the X7s right now."
"What?!" Logan asked, but then Perry showed up and three more X5s came after him. Soon the rooftop was filled with the young soldiers, wrapped in blankets and helping themselves to the food and clothes. Logan stayed busy, distributing supplies and trying to encourage culture-shocked young people. Yes, the world is a bitch. Yes, Manticore wanted you all dead. Yes, you�ll be fine.
Logan was going crazy waiting for Max to show. To take the edge off he cornered Finn and pressed him for information.
"What do you mean, Max is sacrificing the X7s?"
"She didn�t tell you?" Finn wondered.
"She let me out of the body bag and told me to start a war," Logan told him. "I immediately got on the phone to the hospitals and she ran off to join the rest of the division. The next time I saw her she instructed me to set up camp up here, away from the fire, with plenty of supplies. She didn�t have time to explain and I figured I would see her afterwards� what?"
Finn, underneath the dirt smudging his face, went very pale.
"She didn�t tell you?"
"Tell me what? Tell me what?!"
"Turns out she and a lab tech at base, Victor, have been doing secret experiments on the X7s. They�re approaching puberty, which is a volatile time for transgenic kids, so it was easy to get permission to try some new things. Evidently she figured out a way to speed up the aging process and before we left Manticore to come here, she turned the whole troop of X7s into twenty year old soldiers, just like us. She cut out their high brain function, though, which left them unable to perform at the ability of a Manticore solider. Max made those kids normal�well, normal and ten years older. Renfro would have killed her if she found out, so she and Victor stashed the kids away. I don�t think Max ever had any intention of going back after this mission to face the music."
"So, where are the X7s now?" Logan asked, knowing he was going to hate the answer.
"Victor drove the truckload of them into Seattle tonight. It was creepy seeing them, man, they look just like us. Clones, y�know, typical Manticore nightmare fodder. We switched dog tags and gave them orders to go down with the ship. As it were."
"So you basically murdered them."
"Basically," Finn said. "Got any more coffee?"
"You just sent twenty kids to their death in cold blood, and all you can think about is coffee?" Logan forced himself not to yell, but the blank look on Finn�s face was infuriating.
"You ever killed anyone?" Finn asked conversationally.
"Yeah."
"Self defense, right? Kill or be killed?"
"Yeah."
"Well, maybe this will help you sleep at night: we�re too smart, too advanced to be allowed to live. Most of us know too much about what really goes on inside Manticore. We�re a liability they can�t afford. You were the one who gave us that folder. You know what they were planning. I�m surprised they didn�t just kill the lot of us before the mission. But this way, they have a nice story to tell the people holding the moneybags. �Oh, we tragically lost all our field ops.� If they searched that rubble, which you know they�ll do, especially Director Renfro, and don�t find our dog tags, they�ll hunt us down like animals and kill us slowly and painfully. Sending the X7s in our place was a choice to survive. You take the moral high road and do the martyr thing, you get killed. So don�t stand there and call me a psychopath, when you know full well you�d do anything to have Maxie come back alive."
Logan backed way down. Finn was right. No easy answers. One easy question, though�
Where was Max?
