The next morning, rested and refreshed, Max and Logan joined a number of their fellow outcasts in the Terminal City media center and watched the early morning news on KIPR. The picture showed a dozen police cars layered in front of the main gate in multiple barricades, their light bars flashing red and blue, heavily armed and armored officers running around behind the barricade.
“Tell me something I don’t know,” Max said dryly.
“Maybe she will,” Logan said, with a nod to the screen.
The camera had settled on a female newscaster wearing too much lipstick. “As dawn breaks on the siege at Terminal City, the situation is tense but unchanged. While several hundred transgenics remain barricaded inside the restricted area, police and National Guard stand an uneasy watch at the perimeter, each side seemingly waiting to see what the other will do next.”
“No kidding,” Max said to the TV.
“You think they’re coming in?” Logan asked.
She shook her head. “I don’t think they’re that stupid.”
Logan shot her a quick grin. “What about White?”
They exchanged glances — neither really considered Ames White stupid, but both knew him to be incredibly ruthless and reckless, with other people’s lives at least. White, with his antitransgenic agenda, had the most to gain if this siege turned into a slaughter. It didn’t even matter who on which side got slaughtered...
At the thought, Max’s face turned sour and an epithet formed on her pretty mouth. Just as she was about to let it explode out, the hulking figure that was Joshua burst through the door.
“Everyone, come up to the roof,” he shouted, his canine face turned up in a broad smile, his eyes bright with excitement, alive with enthusiasm.
Max turned to Logan, whose shrug and expression said, I have no idea — don’t ask me!
Dix asked, “What?”
But it was too late, Joshua had already bounded back through the door again and they could hear him pounding up the stairs just beyond the wall of the media center.
“Better go see,” Max said. She had great affection for the keenly intelligent but childlike Joshua, and would gladly take time to humor him, even under these circumstances.
Dutifully, they all fell in line behind Max and followed her out the door, then up the stairs, quickly taking the three flights to the roof. When she opened the door, golden sunlight flooded the stairwell. The little ragtag group — Max, Logan, Dix, Luke, and Mole — walked out onto the flat concrete roof, where they found a couple of dozen transgenics already there, including Joshua, Alec, Gem, and her new baby.
With no preamble, Joshua, a couple of X5s, and an X3 raised a makeshift steel flagpole into a base they had built. As Max and the others watched, the quartet hoisted the pole, with the transgenics’ flag — recently painted by Joshua, whose considerable artistic abilities were known to all of them — attached to the top.
Once the pole was in place, they all stepped back and looked up at the banner waving gently in the morning breeze, the sun seeming to make it glow.
Not fighting the swell of emotion, Max stared at the flapping flag, remembering Joshua’s description of the banner’s design.
“This is where we come from,” Joshua had said, “where they tried to keep us.” And he’d pointed to the banner’s bottom third, a broad black band bisected by a red bar code.
“In the dark,” Max had said.
Joshua nodded. “A secret.”
Pointing to the middle band — a wide crimson stretch with a white dove rising from the bar code beneath — Joshua said, “Where we are now... because our blood is being spilled.”
She nodded her acceptance of the appropriateness of that.
Finally, the dogfaced man pointed to the topmost third, a white band. “And this... is where we want to go.”
Max had gotten it immediately. “Into the light,” she said, her voice betraying a gentleness few saw in her.
Now, looking up at Joshua’s design riding the breeze, Max seemed about to burst — partly from pride for what they had accomplished, partly from apprehension for what was to come. Still, for the most part, it was a good feeling.
More important, she thought, how right it felt to be standing here with their own flag.
Max glanced over at Gem and the baby, and another feeling settled on her — as if a great weight were now resting on her shoulders. After all, she was the one who had destroyed Manticore, who had unleashed the transgenics — from beauties like Alec and the late CeCe to beasts like Joshua and Mole; and, free or not, none of them would be under siege in Terminal City if not for her.
But she had carried weight before and survived. Hell, she’d even flourished. She vowed to herself that she would carry this weight too. Logan had said it best, hadn’t he? Freedom wasn’t free.
Alec seemed moved by the moment, and Mole lit up a big cigar and puffed it with pride. They all appeared in better spirits this morning, with the sun shining and their flag flying. They actually had something of their own, and not just a flag: forsaken by God and man, Terminal City was, for good or ill, their own little chunk of the Seattle landscape.
Logan’s hand encased in a white surgical glove, hers in a black leather one, she felt the man she loved take her hand and give it a gentle squeeze. Without looking away from the flag, he said, gently mocking, “Now look what you’ve done.”
It felt so good to be at his side, hand in hand; but she could never let her guard down: if their flesh touched, even if all she did was absently wipe a stray hair from his eyes, even if she accidentally brushed her hand against an exposed section above the surgical gloves, Logan Cale would be seized by that Manticore-implanted virus — specific to his DNA — and he would in all likelihood die.
A tiny smirk dug into her cheek. Most men were allergic to commitment; her man was allergic to her.
They all stayed there for a long time after that, just watching the flag flutter. After a while, Logan finally said, “We need to talk.”
Max looked at him, and he glanced meaningfully toward the door.
She nodded.
Joshua ambled over to them, a shy smile on his snout-mouth. He was proud of himself, but obviously embarrassed by the feeling.
“Nice job,” Logan said. “It looks good, Joshua. You have a real touch.”
The one who had been the first of the transgenics — an unfortunate failed experiment who was in some ways the best of them all — shook his wooly mane. “Thanks, Logan.” He turned to Max, who enveloped him in a hug.
“You did good, Big Fella,” she said.
“Thanks, Little Fella,” he said, returning the hug hugely.
The silly nicknames were a small indication of the big brother and sisterly affection these two shared.
The rest of the transgenics broke up and headed back downstairs, their conversation light and hopeful. Taking one last look at the flag, Max allowed herself a little smile, then followed.
Logan and Joshua stood at the bottom of the stairwell, waiting for her to join them, which she did.
“I just want to check the monitors one more time,” Max said. “Before we talk?”
Logan shrugged; he always deferred to her — almost always. “Sure.”
The two men followed her into the media center, where Dix, Luke, and their merry misfit band were back to watching all twenty-five monitors at once.
“Any movement?” Max asked.
Luke shook his head, which more or less resembled a soft-white lightbulb. “The cops seem happy just to keep us in here for now.”
Reverting to his cynical activist mode, Mole asked, “And how long do you think that’ll last?”
No one said anything.
On one of the media monitors a superimposed announcement of a special bulletin flashed across the screen.