She saw a few nods and heard a few scattered mumbles of agreement.
“Don’t you want to feel the sun on your face? Don’t you want to have a place of your own? A place where you can walk down the street without being afraid?”
The noises of agreement grew louder.
“They made us and they trained us to be soldiers... to defend this country. It’s time they face us and take responsibility for us instead of trying to sweep us away like garbage. We were made in America. And we aren’t going anywhere.”
Original Cindy, nodding, said, “Speak your word.”
Max looked at her for a split second, loving her sister, who had been with her since the very beginning; then she went on: “They call us freaks? Well, okay. Today... I’m proud to be a freak. And today, we’re gonna make our stand, right here.”
Looking around her, she studied the faces, so many faces, of those she knew and those she didn’t know, but in her heart they were all her family. “Who’s with me?” Calmly, Max raised a fist in the air.
Joshua’s fist shot up instantly and Original Cindy’s and Logan’s and Alec’s and one by one the others, even Dix and Luke. This was a solidarity none of them had ever known, not even back at Manticore. They were together, proud and defiant. Finally, only Mole stood alone, arms at his sides.
Max studied the lizard-faced commando. As she watched him gazing from face to face, she could see he felt it too — brotherhood was in the air. Sisterhood too.
Slowly, his fist rose in the air and something like a grin appeared on that lizard puss. “Aw, what the hell...”
A smile broke across Original Cindy’s face; few smiles on the planet were brighter. “Right on!”
Feeling hope flood through her system like adrenaline, Max thought of the ancient Chinese philosopher, Lao Tze, who said, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”
She hoped they were getting off on the right foot.
For the next forty-eight hours the transgenics fortified their position inside and kept a careful eye on the police and National Guard outside, who — true to Mole’s prediction — had locked down the perimeter of Terminal City. Already a chain of command seemed to be establishing itself. Alec and Mole oversaw the upgrade in security, and Dix and Luke monitored the media — whose cameras gave them a nice look at the National Guard and police forces outside the fence. Joshua appointed himself Max’s personal bodyguard, while Logan and Max pored over strategies for their next step.
It was late the second night when Dix called them into the transgenics’ makeshift media center. A dozen monitors were built into a pyramid, with four of their brethren watching them, sifting through the information from the various sources both local and national. Off to the left another baker’s dozen of monitors kept track of the security system the transgenics had installed and been upgrading since they first settled in the restricted area.
“What’s going on?” Max asked.
Dix pointed to a monitor in the third row; and an X5, a redheaded young woman about Max’s age, pointed a remote that raised the volume.
On the screen, a reporter stood in front of Jam Pony, Normal standing next to the man. “But about your captors... what are these creatures like? Is it true you delivered a transgenic baby?”
Normal beamed. He couldn’t have been any happier if he’d been the father himself. “I did, and a beautiful, bouncing baby girl she is.”
The reporter asked, “So — you’re saying they’re not all monsters, then?”
“Monsters?” Normal asked with a shake of his head, as if such a thought were foreign to him. “No more than you or me.”
And with that he turned away and swept the sidewalk in front of Jam Pony. When he saw two of his riders not moving fast enough, he said, “Hey, Sparky — not a country club, get moving. Bip bip bip!”
The two slackers headed off in opposite directions, each trying to get as far away from Normal as fast as they could.
Max turned to Logan. “What do you make of that?”
Grinning, Logan said, “Looks like you’ve got another convert.”
With a perplexed look, Max asked, “Normal?”
Logan shrugged. “Could be helpful to have another friend on the outside.”
She nodded. “Can’t ever hurt to have another friend.” Turning to Dix, she said, “Anything else?”
He shook his mashed-potato head. “You should get some rest, Max.”
A yawn escaped from her. “Maybe you’re right.” She and Logan, as well as most of the rest of them, hadn’t slept for at least the last two days. A nap wouldn’t hurt her, and she knew Logan needed the rest even more than she. “Can you get somebody to wake us at dawn?”
Dix nodded. “Take my room,” he said, pointing to a door off to the right.
She took a few steps then turned back to Logan. “You comin’?”
A small smile appeared and he said, “Yeah.”
Dix’s room was a far cry from the penthouse apartment where not so long ago Logan had lived, or even Max’s condemned-building crib, for that matter; but it would do, for tonight anyway. About as big as a good-sized bathroom and illuminated by a single lightbulb dangling from a cord, it had an old double mattress on the floor in one corner, some bookshelves with a few volumes on the opposite wall to the left, a small round table near them with two chairs, and in the front left corner — below some steam pipes that Logan had to duck beneath — an old leather recliner that had been salvaged from God knew where.
“You take the bed,” Max said. “I’ll take this.” She patted the recliner.
“No,” Logan said. “You take the bed...”
She gave him a sharp look. “When was the last time you slept?”
He shrugged, but said, “Can’t you let me be a gentleman about it?”
She waggled a finger at him. “Who’s a genetically enhanced killing machine that can go days without sleep?”
“You are,” he said hopelessly.
She knew she had him now.
Without any more argument, he spilled into the bed, took off his glasses, and instantly fell asleep. He hadn’t even bothered to take off the exoskeleton — the device affixed to the lower half of him that allowed him to walk. His wheelchair, the contraption he’d spent so much time in the last two years, lay in the pile of rubble that had been his apartment before White’s people trashed it.
Logan Cale was, after all, Eyes Only — the cyber freedom fighter, a terrorist to the authorities, an identity secret to most (but not Max). Scion of a wealthy family, Logan used his inherited money to help those less fortunate than himself — like the transgenics; these efforts had led to the bullets that had put him into a wheelchair.
Plopping onto the recliner, Max kicked back and listened as Logan started to snore softly. She couldn’t think of a prettier sound. Pulling the string on the light and grinning, she looked over at this man who she loved and adored, asleep in the darkness. “I love you,” she said quietly.
He snorted a snore in response, and Max suddenly realized this was what they all wanted, what they were all fighting for — just a little peace and quiet in this big, noisy world.
Logan’s snoring grew louder, and Max decided that even peace without quiet was good enough for her. Closing her eyes, she drifted off in a cloud of hope that carried over into sweet dreams.
Which, when so many of her days were waking nightmares, was one small blessing, anyway.
Chapter three
Sieging is believing