THE ENEMY WITHIN

THE ENEMY WITHIN Chapter 18

18.

Jamie would be along soon. She must have known what Vincent had in mind – but that didn't mean she'd embrace it once confronted with the reality of Max's death. She had an inexplicable attraction to Max and might not take kindly to his demise. How Vincent played the next few minutes would be pivotal.

"Where is he?" Jamie asked as she came to the end of the trail.

The hint of accusation in her voice was not lost on Vincent. The last thing he wanted to do was stoke the flame. "I'm sorry it went down like this. It wasn't what I wanted."

Jamie went to the edge and looked down at the churning dark water below. "If you had just given him more time, he would have seen that we were only doing what we needed to."

"I had no choice. We tried to embrace Max. But he chose the other side. You saw that back in the lab," Vincent said. His features softened, as if consoling a distraught child about the loss of her favorite doll. Resting his hands on her shoulder, "He was a threat from the beginning. Even though we tried to save him, he still betrayed us."

Jamie nodded, but didn't offer unwavering loyalty.

"He risked his life saving ours, too," she said, her voice tinged with uncertainty. "He cared about us, about you."

"Maybe there's a reason Max ended up in the asylum. Maybe he really was unstable." Vincent needed to keep stacking the deck against Max. There really wasn't a choice; a leader could not have dissent and still expect to be followed. But he needed to squash any of Jamie's suspicions before they had a chance to take root. "You're all that matters to me. His path would have killed us. Hell, Noah would be alive if Max hadn't put us in jeopardy. I had to make the difficult choice now, for us."

"What if you're wrong?" Jamie asked.

"Max nearly got us killed back at the lab." He turned from her. "That was his doing. But we're still here, still free. Let's finish together, the way we began." While Max may no longer be a threat, it didn't mean there weren't forces gathering elsewhere. He still needed Jamie on his side. "I will always protect you, no matter the cost."

And just like the first night when he stepped off the carousel, he was relieved when she followed. The hardest part was over. Things would be all right.

*

Kitamura raced into Colonel Jasper's office. "We picked up a distinct new signal. We believe it could be Max's wavelength -"

"We can transmit to him?" Jasper said, already heading towards the door.

"If we're right, it's possible."

He followed Jasper as they surged through the beehive scrambling in the hallways. Jasper was like a magnet with the same polarity as everyone else. They all moved out of his way.

"What makes you think it's his and not one of the others?" Jasper said.

"We know it's a different wavelength from the first one. It happened near the lab compound in Arizona. We can't be certain it isn't one of the other two, but there's a thirty three percent chance," Kitamura said.

"One in three; I'll take it," Jasper said. The duo raced into the spitting rain on the rooftop where a chopper waited. In moments they were up in the downpour on the way to a NASA lab.

"Kitamura," Jasper turned to him, seemingly considering how to phrase his question. "From what you can tell, is Max more human or something else?"

Max hadn't been with the others long, but he had suffered at the military's hand. Could he forgive their attack? "Too soon to say definitively. But I think there's a possibility. Doctor Garner seemed quite fixed on that point. There's nothing in Max's records to suggest any aggressions toward anyone," Kitamura said.