SPN/DA crossover fic: Of Desire and the Status Quo (12/38)
Story Title: Of Desire and the Status Quo
Chapter Title: Oh, How the Mighty Have Fallen
Fandom(s): Supernatural, Dark Angel
Summary: In the end, it’s a complete accident that gets Dean Winchester out of Hell.
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Unfortunately, I neither own Supernatural nor Dark Angel. Just this.
Of Desire and the Status Quo
Chapter XII: Oh, How the Mighty Have Fallen
There’s a fight going on behind him, Dean’s pretty sure, but his vision is decorated in a kaleidoscope of blurry black and sparkly dots, and he thinks he’s hyperventilating, so he wouldn’t bet cash money on it. He can feel, though, and amidst the violent carnage his nervous system is trying to commit, there’s an inferno in his veins, and broken glass shredding his tissues. He doesn’t even know if he’s screaming or crying or anything, all he knows is that, pathetically, this isn’t even the worst agony he’s been in. In fact, in comparison to a few choice decades in Hell, this is mild irritation.
Through his fucked eyesight, there’s a brownish blur at his side, and he thinks it’s a person, a woman, because part of the blob is head-sized and the edges are darker than the center (hair and a face, he’s presuming). He desperately tries to focus, but it’s like he’s permanently crossing his eyes.
“Dean!” the blob yells, and now he knows it’s a person, and the voice sounds remarkably similar to Max’s, although that’s strange, because he doesn’t know how she would find him, or that she’d cared. After all, he had knocked her rather violently into unconsciousness. “Dean, can you hear me?”
Dean knows what it’s saying, but he’s afraid that if he tries to speak, the shakes he’s in are going to cause his teeth to bite right through his lip. He’d really like to avoid any more injuries if possible.
Max-though he doesn’t know how she’s here, Dean’s more sure than not that the blob is Max-rapidly wrenches out the two IVs in Dean’s arms, and then pulls on the restraints, but they don’t budge. On a rapid-fire thought, she grabs the lone bottle on the tray next to the table and looks at the label. There, in block letters, reads TRYPTOPHAN, and the liquid is almost gone. Max’s blood runs cold, the complement to Dean’s severe hyperthermia.
She looks behind Dean, to where he guesses there’s someone else, and orders, “ALEC! Get your ass over here now and help me!”
The name she said strikes a chord in Dean’s brain, but his thoughts are too fuzzy to know why, or even care. He’s certainly never met anyone named Alec. Right? A half-second later, another blob comes on the other side of Dean and looks up at Max. “Help with what?”
“The cuffs, you jackass!”
“Max, they’ve got to be fucking titanium! I can’t break these!”
“Try, damn it, Alec!”
The second blob turns to Dean’s manacles and looks for a breaking point. He mutters an impressive litany of profanities, including some that Dean’s pretty positive aren’t in English, but starts pulling on the restraints, vocalizing grunts of exertion. (Also some words that sound like “This is way too trippy anyway. Fucking clones,” but that doesn’t make any sense, so Dean ignores it.)
“Dean,” Max says, and Dean moves his almost non-existent vision to her face. “Dean, if you can hear me, move or say something, anything.”
“Jesus, why don’t you just give the guy a lollipop and a snuggle,” Alec snaps, still yanking on the restraints.
Dean’s had just about enough with it all, both with Alec’s (whoever he is) drama queen griping and Max’s coddling. So he does what she asks, and moves something. More precisely, concentrates all he has into flipping Alec off. He’s still violently spasming, but Dean’s sure he succeeded.
“What the hell?” Alec demands, and Dean internally smirks.
For Max’s part, she exhales a sigh of relief. “Dean, listen to me,” she insists, and Dean figures he can do that and still be pissed without her knowing. “I think White overdosed you with serotonin and it’s causing your seizures. Just hold on, Dean, we’re going to fix it.” Then she stares into his eyes, but they’re not doing the same; rather, his pupils are dilated, and he can’t seem to focus. Max turns to Alec, panicked. “Alec, something’s wrong with his eyes, he’s not able to center on anything.”
Alec pauses in his attempt to break the cuffs-he’s made a tiny bit of headway, he thinks-and looks over at Max, feeling beads of sweat at his hairline. X5s were built for stamina and strength, but the whole purpose of these manacles is to hold those very transgenics, and just because Dean isn’t one doesn’t change that fact. Or the one where Alec’s muscles are not having fun.
Still, he glances down at Dean’s face, and Max was right, Dean’s eyes-Alec’s own eyes-aren’t steady. Max is staring at Alec like she wants him to come up with some miracle cure, and he wants to help, but he kind of daydreamt his way through Pharmacology back at Manticore…
“Max, White must’ve thought he was me,” Alec says in newfound realization after a moment, flipping through his cerebral Rolodex of medicine, and feeling guilt start to seep in. “He guessed I needed the supplements and gave to Dean what a transgenic would usually require. It’s toxic at those dosages in humans, Max. Delirium, hallucinations, a hundred and six degree temp, seizures, tachycardia…”
“What can we do?” Max asks desperately, her fingers nervously raking through Dean’s hair.
Alec hates times like these, where he’s expected to be an expert at something that he’s just not. Max wants him to be an accredited pathologist, but he’s not. He knows a little about a lot of things, and a lot about some things, but what to do in case your maybe-clone is overdosed with a lethal concentration of an amino acid by a sociopath who can’t feel pain is not in Alec’s admittedly expansive repertoire. But he’s definitely good at bullshitting and improvising, so that’s what he plans on doing. He sends a mental apology to Dean in case he, you know, accidentally kills the guy or something.
Alec drops his shoulders. “Not much. Just treat any symptoms we can,” Alec proposes bleakly. “But we can’t do that with him chained up like this, and much as you may think my strength is inexhaustible-and I’d be ever so flattered if you did-it’s not. What I do know, though, is that if the guy keeps going on like this, his neurons are going to short out and probably cause brain damage. Not to mention he could black out before that due to friggin’ oxygen deprivation from the heightened BP, and then we’d be in even more shit, and who knows what crap we’d have to give him to-”
“ALEC!” Max yells, cutting off his rant. “Dean’s not gonna die, I won’t let him. Now go find a way to cut through that metal, because if something happens to Dean, it’s on your head! Move it!”
Alec snarls at her, but blurs out of the room anyway. Max sighs, knowing she’s being a bitch, but honestly, that’s the only way she knows how to be particularly in a crisis. Plus, Alec just makes it so easy to be a bitching target, and it’s not like she could use Dean for that, the reason least of which being that he’s about one step away from keeling over.
“Stay with me, Dean,” Max orders. Dean’s eyes are glassy, but they’re roughly aligned with Max’s, and she prays that Alec will find something to break the chains in time.Alec skids down a hallway, cursing out the labyrinth of a bunker, and regretting not paying much attention to the layout as the guards that had been shooting at him and Max (though that’s a good excuse, he reasons). Also the fact that he hadn’t anticipated freakin’ titanium chains for an Ordinary. He judges Dean as being stronger than most Ordinaries, but he’s not that strong. Alec refuses to acknowledge the ego boost he gets from the fact that White had felt it necessary to use such a metal to keep Alec in check. It would just be fundamentally inappropriate.
He’s starting to get a little nervous when he sees no one for two hallways now; he would’ve thought there would be guards swarming as soon as it was noticed Dean had reinforcements coming for him; he hadn’t shot all of them as he and Max had sprinted through the compound. He’s about to just give up and try to convince Max that he’s a good enough shot to simply blow the bonds away with his handgun, when his hypersensitive ears hear a quiet click. On pure impulse, Alec jumps into a somersault, and is immediately glad he did, because a barrage of bullets peppers the spot where he’d been standing a moment ago.
He looks up to where the trajectory suggested the shooter is, and his guess is true: a sentry, fit and mid-twenties if Alec has to estimate, is crouched on the landing of a stairwell, the majority of his body hidden by the railing. His hands are steady with a silenced, Marine-grade LSAT rifle, and Alec can’t help but eye it with envy.
And then he moves.
So quickly the sniper’s eyes are still on the place Alec was, Alec blurs, never in one spot for more than a fraction of a second, and sprints up the first set of stairs. He kicks out, sending the rifle over the edge of the stairs and clattering to the level below. The sniper is next, and Alec puts a fist in his jaw and follows it up with a knee to the solar plexus, sending the guy doubling over himself and onto his knees, staring up at Alec with a glint that can only describe a combination of loathing and determination to not let his injuries keep him down. Unfortunately, Alec’s not inclined to allow that to happen.
“Keys! Now!” Alec shouts, holding the soldier up against the wall, his feet dangling twelve inches from the floor.
“What…are you…talking about?” the man chokes, trying vainly to release Alec’s vise grip on his throat.
Alec growls, pressing the soldier’s larynx tighter. “The man kept in one of the exam rooms on this floor, I know you know who he is!” Alec demands. “You wanna live? Give me the keys to unlock those cuffs!”
“I…can’t…”
“Bullshit!” Alec yells, bringing his face closer to the man’s, his eyes spitting green fire. “You get five seconds to hand them over or I break your pathetic neck and leave your pretty little wife a widow!”
The sniper’s expression, despite his slow asphyxiation, turns to one of terror, with an admirable amount of fury. “Don’t…hurt…” he struggles, his breaths gurgling.
Alec bares his teeth, which for all the menace behind them may as well be pointed and sharp as a tiger’s, and twists his hand so the man’s neck does the same, his vertebrae creaking. All remaining doubt that Alec wouldn’t go through with killing him, and maybe his wife, disappears in the man’s mind as his neck gets dangerously close to snapped, and he gives Alec an almost imperceptible nod.
The man slides to the ground as Alec shoves his hand away from the guy’s neck, coughing and sucking in complete lungfuls of air. “Gun…scope…fake…” the guy manages.
As the soldier watches Alec disappear from his view, he closes his eyes, wondering what all he’s done. He doesn’t know if White would figure out it was he who helped the X5-no, there had to have been a mistake, he thinks; the person who just blurred off is the X5-escape, but in his mind, it’s not like he had a choice. He has no illusions that his attacker wouldn’t have slaughtered him, and he isn’t about to leave his pregnant wife husbandless if he can help it.
The minute the man speaks, Alec’s gone, jumping over the railing to land squarely next to the rifle, ripping off the optical scope. He finds the seam where the two pieces of sight are connected, but instead of a perfect hairline like it should be, there’s evidence of welding, and Alec tears it apart, his muscles straining against the hard metal. Finally, it separates, and a silver key falls from the casing. Alec grabs it and blurs away, towards where he hopes he’ll find a still-alive Dean.“Come on, Alec, hurry up,” Max mutters, pacing impatiently. Dean’s still convulsing, and though they’re less seizure and more hyperreflexia, Max gets the feeling that’s even worse. That maybe it means his nervous system is shutting down.
He’s covered in sweat, his hair dripping, and when Max last felt his forehead, it was hotter than her temperature usually runs. And considering transgenics’ were at a level that in an Ordinary would indicate a fever, well…Max is no medical expert, but she knows an Ordinary’s temperature tolerance taps out at around a hundred and six degrees Fahrenheit before the brain starts dying, and Dean’s rapidly approaching it, if not already there.
Worse still, all Max can do is wait. She tried getting the restraints off, in whatever manner or with whatever implements she could, but they wouldn’t budge. Her own nerves had started to overfire when she heard the gunshots echoing through the corridors, and she has faith in Alec’s judgment on his abilities, but she sincerely hopes she’s not waiting for nothing, and that Alec’s not really rotting in a hallway, riddled with lead.
She drops into a fighting stance, her fists up and legs tensed for movement as she hears footsteps running towards her, but when she sees Alec’s lithe, if flushed, form dart into the room, she relaxes. Well, to an extent.
“The hell took you so long?!” she yells, slapping him on the shoulder.
Alec spares a glance at Dean’s pale figure, and then takes the key he’d requisitioned and fits it into the locks, agile fingers freeing Dean in a matter of seconds. “Aw, didn’t know you worried about me,” Alec mocks, moving to pick up Dean.
“What’re you doing?” Max questions, watching as Alec decides how best to manage the situation.
“We’ve got to get him out of here, don’t we?” Alec counters. “I just wish we could sedate him or something-I mean, I can carry him easy, but not if he’s flailing around like this.”
Max looks at Dean’s body, at her and Alec’s own arms which are holding him down in lieu of the metal cuffs so he doesn’t hurt himself inadvertently. “You sure you don’t remember anything about the serotonin whatever?” she asks, nearly begs, Alec to think.
Alec rubs a hand over his face, desperately wanting to answer her. Finally piecing together the little he’d learned about Dean’s condition from that one job, coming to a verdict, and not liking it at all, Alec orders, “Stick an IV back in him. Our only option is to treat as many symptoms as we can as fast as we can. If this moves as swiftly as I think, there’s no way we can get to a hospital in time. Lock the door and then look for some diazepam or lorazepam for the seizures.”
Max does as he says, hooking up one of the needles back into Dean’s arm and then making sure the deadbolt is still firmly in place. She’d wanted to get Dean out of the damn bunker, but Alec’s right-they don’t have time for it, Dean doesn’t have time for it. Normally, she’d chew Alec out for bossing her around, but at this point, she’s beyond being too prideful to not accept help where she can get it. And Alec’s definitely better than nothing.
There’s a cabinet across the room, and Max goes over to it, her eyes rapidly scanning the long, complicated drug names which aren’t in any order that she can discern. Finally, she finds a bottle with the label of DIAZEPAM, and snatches it. Alec’s turned towards her, his hands held out, and she tosses it over to him.
Alec draws out some of the fluid-Max briefly wonders if he’s just guessing on the dosage, and hopes he’s not-and presses the syringe into the tubing, sending the muscle relaxant into Dean’s system.
“What next?” Max asks, and if Alec weren’t so focused on keeping his clone-or donor, or twin, or whatever the hell Dean is-he’d grin and joke about something concerning Max’s dependence on him, but as it is, he can’t.
“Need to control the tachycardia,” Alec says, his voice clipped and anxious at the fact that he can feel the heat rising from Dean’s skin even though he’s not in contact with it. “It’s-uh…” He stalls on the drug name, feeling as though he’d had it right there, and then it popped out of his mind while saluting him the finger. “Shit. It’s, like, es-es- something.”
Max stares at him, agape, expectant. And then, as a surprise to even herself, she painfully remembers that time in ’07 when she oversaw one of her fellow X5s being worked over for the seizures his body had succumbed to. He’d had a fast heart rate as well, and they’d talked about something named-
“Esmolol,” Max says suddenly, already searching for the medicine. A few moments later, she extracts that bottle and tosses it to Alec again.
“There’s nothing we can do for the fever except cool down his extremities,” Alec states, and then gestures to a sink to the left of him. “Dump water, as cold as possible, over him. Hurry. Temp’s probably past 106 by now.”
She doesn’t waste time watching as Alec futzes with Dean’s IV, instead going to the sink and turning on the faucet full blast. There’s a bucket, for what she really doesn’t want to postulate, underneath the sink, and she fills it with the frigid water. Without a second thought, she empties the contents over Dean’s body-whose tremors have lessened the slightest bit, she’s pretty sure-drenching him, his thin clothes sticking to his skin with a sick mixture of water, sweat, and blood.
Alec grabs the metal tray that had carried all sorts of experimental apparatuses-syringes, scalpels, grafting devices, all things Max had seen used and endured in Manticore-clearing it of everything, and started undulating it over Dean’s chest, spurring the heat evaporation on as Max pours more water over him.
After multiple repetitions of this, Max’s wide brown eyes meet his above Dean’s prone form, a rarely seen naked, worried trust in her gaze, the trust in him, which is rare in and of itself. Alec feels he’s done all he can, but it doesn’t stop the fear of what would happen if Dean’s system decided to completely shut down. So far, the man had fought valiantly, but Alec knows all too well that even the most steadfast of men fail-especially Ordinaries-and if that happens…Alec’s afraid Max would never forgive him for it, regardless of that it wouldn’t have been his fault.
Max continues her ministrations, however, refusing to acknowledge her brief instant of weakness, and Alec rechecks Dean’s blood pressure and temperature. He breathes a ragged sigh of relief when his counting reveals that Dean’s heart rate is edging towards only a little faster than normal, and the heat of his skin is no longer scalding. There are still tremors passing through his body, but they’re more like aftershocks of an earthquake: worrisome, and potentially dangerous, but ultimately not of staggering import.
Feeling that Dean’s shakes are no longer uncontrollable, Alec relaxes his arms, freeing Dean from his suppression. “Pack up what’s left of the meds,” Alec says to Max, eyeing the at most half-empty drug bottles. “We should go. We’ll get Rade to keep him stabilized.”
“Read my mind,” Max declares, taking off her sweater and wrapping the bottles in it. In spite of everything, she catches Alec’s eyes farther south than she’d like. She snaps a glare at him, not needing any words to understand what’s running through his head.
Alec shrugs, but abides, and hefts Dean over his shoulder with a grunt, his knees buckling for a second under Dean’s dead weight before he adjusts his grip. It’s far from the best situation, and definitely the kind of transfer that any medical professional worth their salt would frown upon, but it’s the best Alec can do. Plus, it’s not like it’s enjoyable for Alec, either-what he’d said before about it being easy to pick up Dean? Yeah, he’s slightly underestimated Dean’s muscle mass, not to mention the fact that Dean’s waterlogged at the moment, immediately soaking Alec and darkening his mood. Max, of course, draws up a laugh at his expense. As they’re about to head out the room, her eyes catch a stack of darkly-colored precisely folded garments that she vaguely recognizes as Dean wearing before. Amazed that they hadn’t just been burned or confiscated or something, Max snatches them and rearranges them with her sweater around the medicine containers, then hurries out ahead of Alec.
The building is remarkably unoccupied-Alec would like to pay that some attention when he’s not, you know, busy ferrying a near-dead Ordinary through enemy territory-and apart from a few leftover sentries that Max makes quick work of neutralizing, the three soon find their way out of the building.
Faced with the daunting return trip to Terminal City (and Alec barely restraining a tirade on Max of how she’d proclaimed forty miles with Dean would be nothing…yeah, right), they start doing just that, heading through the forest while keeping the road in sight, the only thing working in their favor being that it had temporarily stopped raining.
It’s after about twenty minutes of trudging through dense brush that both Max and Alec hear the characteristic rumble of a V6 engine and heavy-duty tires crunching over loose bits of asphalt. Alec and Max exchange loaded glances, both thinking the same thing, and Max nods, blurring away. Alec follows, slower, still remaining out of sight. He adjusts Dean’s weight on his shoulders once more, and waits.Max gets to the road before the vehicle does, and stands in the middle of it. Having set down the medicine bottles carefully off to the side, she’s left in her close-fitting cargo pants and black, midriff-baring tank top, grateful that Manticore made her this way-it made it easier to simultaneously distract and kick ass.
As she’d expected, the four-by-four, camo-painted Jeep Wrangler brakes to a stop a few feet in front of her, both the driver and passenger (likely returning from some field work for White or something) peering at her suspiciously. “Got room for a third, boys?” she inquires coquettishly.
The passenger grins lecherously, and then gives Max her opening as he looks at his companion. Vaulting into an aerial somersault, Max lands on the hard top of the car; keeping a firm hold on the roll bars, she flips down and slams her booted heels into the driver’s head, his momentum crashing his skull into the passenger’s. The driver is knocked out cold (and if Max guesses right, concussed as well), but the passenger is merely dazed, so she jumps down to the ground and yanks him out of the open window, throwing him unyieldingly into the brush. She does the same with the unconscious driver, not caring where either man lands.
A second later, as if on cue, Alec appears, opening the back doors and setting Dean supinely in the seat, rolling his shoulder where Dean had rested to untwist his muscles. Granting Max the driver’s seat, he hops into the one beside her, her foot pressing the accelerator flat to the floor before Alec can even shut the door, a wide grin spread across her face, the thrill of hijacking a ride and knocking out two horny guards getting to her.
Enjoying the infrequent happenstance of Max being overtly happy, Alec returns the smile, leaning back in the seat and enjoying the rush of wind through the open window. After all, he and Max got out of the bunker unscathed, prevented Dean from dying an incredibly painful death-hopefully-and, to top it all off, kicked some ass.
All things considered, a productive night.
Next
Chapter Title: Oh, How the Mighty Have Fallen
Fandom(s): Supernatural, Dark Angel
Summary: In the end, it’s a complete accident that gets Dean Winchester out of Hell.
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Unfortunately, I neither own Supernatural nor Dark Angel. Just this.
Of Desire and the Status Quo
Chapter XII: Oh, How the Mighty Have Fallen
There’s a fight going on behind him, Dean’s pretty sure, but his vision is decorated in a kaleidoscope of blurry black and sparkly dots, and he thinks he’s hyperventilating, so he wouldn’t bet cash money on it. He can feel, though, and amidst the violent carnage his nervous system is trying to commit, there’s an inferno in his veins, and broken glass shredding his tissues. He doesn’t even know if he’s screaming or crying or anything, all he knows is that, pathetically, this isn’t even the worst agony he’s been in. In fact, in comparison to a few choice decades in Hell, this is mild irritation.
Through his fucked eyesight, there’s a brownish blur at his side, and he thinks it’s a person, a woman, because part of the blob is head-sized and the edges are darker than the center (hair and a face, he’s presuming). He desperately tries to focus, but it’s like he’s permanently crossing his eyes.
“Dean!” the blob yells, and now he knows it’s a person, and the voice sounds remarkably similar to Max’s, although that’s strange, because he doesn’t know how she would find him, or that she’d cared. After all, he had knocked her rather violently into unconsciousness. “Dean, can you hear me?”
Dean knows what it’s saying, but he’s afraid that if he tries to speak, the shakes he’s in are going to cause his teeth to bite right through his lip. He’d really like to avoid any more injuries if possible.
Max-though he doesn’t know how she’s here, Dean’s more sure than not that the blob is Max-rapidly wrenches out the two IVs in Dean’s arms, and then pulls on the restraints, but they don’t budge. On a rapid-fire thought, she grabs the lone bottle on the tray next to the table and looks at the label. There, in block letters, reads TRYPTOPHAN, and the liquid is almost gone. Max’s blood runs cold, the complement to Dean’s severe hyperthermia.
She looks behind Dean, to where he guesses there’s someone else, and orders, “ALEC! Get your ass over here now and help me!”
The name she said strikes a chord in Dean’s brain, but his thoughts are too fuzzy to know why, or even care. He’s certainly never met anyone named Alec. Right? A half-second later, another blob comes on the other side of Dean and looks up at Max. “Help with what?”
“The cuffs, you jackass!”
“Max, they’ve got to be fucking titanium! I can’t break these!”
“Try, damn it, Alec!”
The second blob turns to Dean’s manacles and looks for a breaking point. He mutters an impressive litany of profanities, including some that Dean’s pretty positive aren’t in English, but starts pulling on the restraints, vocalizing grunts of exertion. (Also some words that sound like “This is way too trippy anyway. Fucking clones,” but that doesn’t make any sense, so Dean ignores it.)
“Dean,” Max says, and Dean moves his almost non-existent vision to her face. “Dean, if you can hear me, move or say something, anything.”
“Jesus, why don’t you just give the guy a lollipop and a snuggle,” Alec snaps, still yanking on the restraints.
Dean’s had just about enough with it all, both with Alec’s (whoever he is) drama queen griping and Max’s coddling. So he does what she asks, and moves something. More precisely, concentrates all he has into flipping Alec off. He’s still violently spasming, but Dean’s sure he succeeded.
“What the hell?” Alec demands, and Dean internally smirks.
For Max’s part, she exhales a sigh of relief. “Dean, listen to me,” she insists, and Dean figures he can do that and still be pissed without her knowing. “I think White overdosed you with serotonin and it’s causing your seizures. Just hold on, Dean, we’re going to fix it.” Then she stares into his eyes, but they’re not doing the same; rather, his pupils are dilated, and he can’t seem to focus. Max turns to Alec, panicked. “Alec, something’s wrong with his eyes, he’s not able to center on anything.”
Alec pauses in his attempt to break the cuffs-he’s made a tiny bit of headway, he thinks-and looks over at Max, feeling beads of sweat at his hairline. X5s were built for stamina and strength, but the whole purpose of these manacles is to hold those very transgenics, and just because Dean isn’t one doesn’t change that fact. Or the one where Alec’s muscles are not having fun.
Still, he glances down at Dean’s face, and Max was right, Dean’s eyes-Alec’s own eyes-aren’t steady. Max is staring at Alec like she wants him to come up with some miracle cure, and he wants to help, but he kind of daydreamt his way through Pharmacology back at Manticore…
“Max, White must’ve thought he was me,” Alec says in newfound realization after a moment, flipping through his cerebral Rolodex of medicine, and feeling guilt start to seep in. “He guessed I needed the supplements and gave to Dean what a transgenic would usually require. It’s toxic at those dosages in humans, Max. Delirium, hallucinations, a hundred and six degree temp, seizures, tachycardia…”
“What can we do?” Max asks desperately, her fingers nervously raking through Dean’s hair.
Alec hates times like these, where he’s expected to be an expert at something that he’s just not. Max wants him to be an accredited pathologist, but he’s not. He knows a little about a lot of things, and a lot about some things, but what to do in case your maybe-clone is overdosed with a lethal concentration of an amino acid by a sociopath who can’t feel pain is not in Alec’s admittedly expansive repertoire. But he’s definitely good at bullshitting and improvising, so that’s what he plans on doing. He sends a mental apology to Dean in case he, you know, accidentally kills the guy or something.
Alec drops his shoulders. “Not much. Just treat any symptoms we can,” Alec proposes bleakly. “But we can’t do that with him chained up like this, and much as you may think my strength is inexhaustible-and I’d be ever so flattered if you did-it’s not. What I do know, though, is that if the guy keeps going on like this, his neurons are going to short out and probably cause brain damage. Not to mention he could black out before that due to friggin’ oxygen deprivation from the heightened BP, and then we’d be in even more shit, and who knows what crap we’d have to give him to-”
“ALEC!” Max yells, cutting off his rant. “Dean’s not gonna die, I won’t let him. Now go find a way to cut through that metal, because if something happens to Dean, it’s on your head! Move it!”
Alec snarls at her, but blurs out of the room anyway. Max sighs, knowing she’s being a bitch, but honestly, that’s the only way she knows how to be particularly in a crisis. Plus, Alec just makes it so easy to be a bitching target, and it’s not like she could use Dean for that, the reason least of which being that he’s about one step away from keeling over.
“Stay with me, Dean,” Max orders. Dean’s eyes are glassy, but they’re roughly aligned with Max’s, and she prays that Alec will find something to break the chains in time.Alec skids down a hallway, cursing out the labyrinth of a bunker, and regretting not paying much attention to the layout as the guards that had been shooting at him and Max (though that’s a good excuse, he reasons). Also the fact that he hadn’t anticipated freakin’ titanium chains for an Ordinary. He judges Dean as being stronger than most Ordinaries, but he’s not that strong. Alec refuses to acknowledge the ego boost he gets from the fact that White had felt it necessary to use such a metal to keep Alec in check. It would just be fundamentally inappropriate.
He’s starting to get a little nervous when he sees no one for two hallways now; he would’ve thought there would be guards swarming as soon as it was noticed Dean had reinforcements coming for him; he hadn’t shot all of them as he and Max had sprinted through the compound. He’s about to just give up and try to convince Max that he’s a good enough shot to simply blow the bonds away with his handgun, when his hypersensitive ears hear a quiet click. On pure impulse, Alec jumps into a somersault, and is immediately glad he did, because a barrage of bullets peppers the spot where he’d been standing a moment ago.
He looks up to where the trajectory suggested the shooter is, and his guess is true: a sentry, fit and mid-twenties if Alec has to estimate, is crouched on the landing of a stairwell, the majority of his body hidden by the railing. His hands are steady with a silenced, Marine-grade LSAT rifle, and Alec can’t help but eye it with envy.
And then he moves.
So quickly the sniper’s eyes are still on the place Alec was, Alec blurs, never in one spot for more than a fraction of a second, and sprints up the first set of stairs. He kicks out, sending the rifle over the edge of the stairs and clattering to the level below. The sniper is next, and Alec puts a fist in his jaw and follows it up with a knee to the solar plexus, sending the guy doubling over himself and onto his knees, staring up at Alec with a glint that can only describe a combination of loathing and determination to not let his injuries keep him down. Unfortunately, Alec’s not inclined to allow that to happen.
“Keys! Now!” Alec shouts, holding the soldier up against the wall, his feet dangling twelve inches from the floor.
“What…are you…talking about?” the man chokes, trying vainly to release Alec’s vise grip on his throat.
Alec growls, pressing the soldier’s larynx tighter. “The man kept in one of the exam rooms on this floor, I know you know who he is!” Alec demands. “You wanna live? Give me the keys to unlock those cuffs!”
“I…can’t…”
“Bullshit!” Alec yells, bringing his face closer to the man’s, his eyes spitting green fire. “You get five seconds to hand them over or I break your pathetic neck and leave your pretty little wife a widow!”
The sniper’s expression, despite his slow asphyxiation, turns to one of terror, with an admirable amount of fury. “Don’t…hurt…” he struggles, his breaths gurgling.
Alec bares his teeth, which for all the menace behind them may as well be pointed and sharp as a tiger’s, and twists his hand so the man’s neck does the same, his vertebrae creaking. All remaining doubt that Alec wouldn’t go through with killing him, and maybe his wife, disappears in the man’s mind as his neck gets dangerously close to snapped, and he gives Alec an almost imperceptible nod.
The man slides to the ground as Alec shoves his hand away from the guy’s neck, coughing and sucking in complete lungfuls of air. “Gun…scope…fake…” the guy manages.
As the soldier watches Alec disappear from his view, he closes his eyes, wondering what all he’s done. He doesn’t know if White would figure out it was he who helped the X5-no, there had to have been a mistake, he thinks; the person who just blurred off is the X5-escape, but in his mind, it’s not like he had a choice. He has no illusions that his attacker wouldn’t have slaughtered him, and he isn’t about to leave his pregnant wife husbandless if he can help it.
The minute the man speaks, Alec’s gone, jumping over the railing to land squarely next to the rifle, ripping off the optical scope. He finds the seam where the two pieces of sight are connected, but instead of a perfect hairline like it should be, there’s evidence of welding, and Alec tears it apart, his muscles straining against the hard metal. Finally, it separates, and a silver key falls from the casing. Alec grabs it and blurs away, towards where he hopes he’ll find a still-alive Dean.“Come on, Alec, hurry up,” Max mutters, pacing impatiently. Dean’s still convulsing, and though they’re less seizure and more hyperreflexia, Max gets the feeling that’s even worse. That maybe it means his nervous system is shutting down.
He’s covered in sweat, his hair dripping, and when Max last felt his forehead, it was hotter than her temperature usually runs. And considering transgenics’ were at a level that in an Ordinary would indicate a fever, well…Max is no medical expert, but she knows an Ordinary’s temperature tolerance taps out at around a hundred and six degrees Fahrenheit before the brain starts dying, and Dean’s rapidly approaching it, if not already there.
Worse still, all Max can do is wait. She tried getting the restraints off, in whatever manner or with whatever implements she could, but they wouldn’t budge. Her own nerves had started to overfire when she heard the gunshots echoing through the corridors, and she has faith in Alec’s judgment on his abilities, but she sincerely hopes she’s not waiting for nothing, and that Alec’s not really rotting in a hallway, riddled with lead.
She drops into a fighting stance, her fists up and legs tensed for movement as she hears footsteps running towards her, but when she sees Alec’s lithe, if flushed, form dart into the room, she relaxes. Well, to an extent.
“The hell took you so long?!” she yells, slapping him on the shoulder.
Alec spares a glance at Dean’s pale figure, and then takes the key he’d requisitioned and fits it into the locks, agile fingers freeing Dean in a matter of seconds. “Aw, didn’t know you worried about me,” Alec mocks, moving to pick up Dean.
“What’re you doing?” Max questions, watching as Alec decides how best to manage the situation.
“We’ve got to get him out of here, don’t we?” Alec counters. “I just wish we could sedate him or something-I mean, I can carry him easy, but not if he’s flailing around like this.”
Max looks at Dean’s body, at her and Alec’s own arms which are holding him down in lieu of the metal cuffs so he doesn’t hurt himself inadvertently. “You sure you don’t remember anything about the serotonin whatever?” she asks, nearly begs, Alec to think.
Alec rubs a hand over his face, desperately wanting to answer her. Finally piecing together the little he’d learned about Dean’s condition from that one job, coming to a verdict, and not liking it at all, Alec orders, “Stick an IV back in him. Our only option is to treat as many symptoms as we can as fast as we can. If this moves as swiftly as I think, there’s no way we can get to a hospital in time. Lock the door and then look for some diazepam or lorazepam for the seizures.”
Max does as he says, hooking up one of the needles back into Dean’s arm and then making sure the deadbolt is still firmly in place. She’d wanted to get Dean out of the damn bunker, but Alec’s right-they don’t have time for it, Dean doesn’t have time for it. Normally, she’d chew Alec out for bossing her around, but at this point, she’s beyond being too prideful to not accept help where she can get it. And Alec’s definitely better than nothing.
There’s a cabinet across the room, and Max goes over to it, her eyes rapidly scanning the long, complicated drug names which aren’t in any order that she can discern. Finally, she finds a bottle with the label of DIAZEPAM, and snatches it. Alec’s turned towards her, his hands held out, and she tosses it over to him.
Alec draws out some of the fluid-Max briefly wonders if he’s just guessing on the dosage, and hopes he’s not-and presses the syringe into the tubing, sending the muscle relaxant into Dean’s system.
“What next?” Max asks, and if Alec weren’t so focused on keeping his clone-or donor, or twin, or whatever the hell Dean is-he’d grin and joke about something concerning Max’s dependence on him, but as it is, he can’t.
“Need to control the tachycardia,” Alec says, his voice clipped and anxious at the fact that he can feel the heat rising from Dean’s skin even though he’s not in contact with it. “It’s-uh…” He stalls on the drug name, feeling as though he’d had it right there, and then it popped out of his mind while saluting him the finger. “Shit. It’s, like, es-es- something.”
Max stares at him, agape, expectant. And then, as a surprise to even herself, she painfully remembers that time in ’07 when she oversaw one of her fellow X5s being worked over for the seizures his body had succumbed to. He’d had a fast heart rate as well, and they’d talked about something named-
“Esmolol,” Max says suddenly, already searching for the medicine. A few moments later, she extracts that bottle and tosses it to Alec again.
“There’s nothing we can do for the fever except cool down his extremities,” Alec states, and then gestures to a sink to the left of him. “Dump water, as cold as possible, over him. Hurry. Temp’s probably past 106 by now.”
She doesn’t waste time watching as Alec futzes with Dean’s IV, instead going to the sink and turning on the faucet full blast. There’s a bucket, for what she really doesn’t want to postulate, underneath the sink, and she fills it with the frigid water. Without a second thought, she empties the contents over Dean’s body-whose tremors have lessened the slightest bit, she’s pretty sure-drenching him, his thin clothes sticking to his skin with a sick mixture of water, sweat, and blood.
Alec grabs the metal tray that had carried all sorts of experimental apparatuses-syringes, scalpels, grafting devices, all things Max had seen used and endured in Manticore-clearing it of everything, and started undulating it over Dean’s chest, spurring the heat evaporation on as Max pours more water over him.
After multiple repetitions of this, Max’s wide brown eyes meet his above Dean’s prone form, a rarely seen naked, worried trust in her gaze, the trust in him, which is rare in and of itself. Alec feels he’s done all he can, but it doesn’t stop the fear of what would happen if Dean’s system decided to completely shut down. So far, the man had fought valiantly, but Alec knows all too well that even the most steadfast of men fail-especially Ordinaries-and if that happens…Alec’s afraid Max would never forgive him for it, regardless of that it wouldn’t have been his fault.
Max continues her ministrations, however, refusing to acknowledge her brief instant of weakness, and Alec rechecks Dean’s blood pressure and temperature. He breathes a ragged sigh of relief when his counting reveals that Dean’s heart rate is edging towards only a little faster than normal, and the heat of his skin is no longer scalding. There are still tremors passing through his body, but they’re more like aftershocks of an earthquake: worrisome, and potentially dangerous, but ultimately not of staggering import.
Feeling that Dean’s shakes are no longer uncontrollable, Alec relaxes his arms, freeing Dean from his suppression. “Pack up what’s left of the meds,” Alec says to Max, eyeing the at most half-empty drug bottles. “We should go. We’ll get Rade to keep him stabilized.”
“Read my mind,” Max declares, taking off her sweater and wrapping the bottles in it. In spite of everything, she catches Alec’s eyes farther south than she’d like. She snaps a glare at him, not needing any words to understand what’s running through his head.
Alec shrugs, but abides, and hefts Dean over his shoulder with a grunt, his knees buckling for a second under Dean’s dead weight before he adjusts his grip. It’s far from the best situation, and definitely the kind of transfer that any medical professional worth their salt would frown upon, but it’s the best Alec can do. Plus, it’s not like it’s enjoyable for Alec, either-what he’d said before about it being easy to pick up Dean? Yeah, he’s slightly underestimated Dean’s muscle mass, not to mention the fact that Dean’s waterlogged at the moment, immediately soaking Alec and darkening his mood. Max, of course, draws up a laugh at his expense. As they’re about to head out the room, her eyes catch a stack of darkly-colored precisely folded garments that she vaguely recognizes as Dean wearing before. Amazed that they hadn’t just been burned or confiscated or something, Max snatches them and rearranges them with her sweater around the medicine containers, then hurries out ahead of Alec.
The building is remarkably unoccupied-Alec would like to pay that some attention when he’s not, you know, busy ferrying a near-dead Ordinary through enemy territory-and apart from a few leftover sentries that Max makes quick work of neutralizing, the three soon find their way out of the building.
Faced with the daunting return trip to Terminal City (and Alec barely restraining a tirade on Max of how she’d proclaimed forty miles with Dean would be nothing…yeah, right), they start doing just that, heading through the forest while keeping the road in sight, the only thing working in their favor being that it had temporarily stopped raining.
It’s after about twenty minutes of trudging through dense brush that both Max and Alec hear the characteristic rumble of a V6 engine and heavy-duty tires crunching over loose bits of asphalt. Alec and Max exchange loaded glances, both thinking the same thing, and Max nods, blurring away. Alec follows, slower, still remaining out of sight. He adjusts Dean’s weight on his shoulders once more, and waits.Max gets to the road before the vehicle does, and stands in the middle of it. Having set down the medicine bottles carefully off to the side, she’s left in her close-fitting cargo pants and black, midriff-baring tank top, grateful that Manticore made her this way-it made it easier to simultaneously distract and kick ass.
As she’d expected, the four-by-four, camo-painted Jeep Wrangler brakes to a stop a few feet in front of her, both the driver and passenger (likely returning from some field work for White or something) peering at her suspiciously. “Got room for a third, boys?” she inquires coquettishly.
The passenger grins lecherously, and then gives Max her opening as he looks at his companion. Vaulting into an aerial somersault, Max lands on the hard top of the car; keeping a firm hold on the roll bars, she flips down and slams her booted heels into the driver’s head, his momentum crashing his skull into the passenger’s. The driver is knocked out cold (and if Max guesses right, concussed as well), but the passenger is merely dazed, so she jumps down to the ground and yanks him out of the open window, throwing him unyieldingly into the brush. She does the same with the unconscious driver, not caring where either man lands.
A second later, as if on cue, Alec appears, opening the back doors and setting Dean supinely in the seat, rolling his shoulder where Dean had rested to untwist his muscles. Granting Max the driver’s seat, he hops into the one beside her, her foot pressing the accelerator flat to the floor before Alec can even shut the door, a wide grin spread across her face, the thrill of hijacking a ride and knocking out two horny guards getting to her.
Enjoying the infrequent happenstance of Max being overtly happy, Alec returns the smile, leaning back in the seat and enjoying the rush of wind through the open window. After all, he and Max got out of the bunker unscathed, prevented Dean from dying an incredibly painful death-hopefully-and, to top it all off, kicked some ass.
All things considered, a productive night.
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