After the Dark Read Online Free PDF Page A

the booth across from Max. “I know you're
trying
to be a vegetarian . . . How's it working out?”
    She smirked. “Let's just say, next time you're ready to cook up a batch of that beefy chili of yours . . . I'm there.”
    Tall, with spiky dark blond hair, wire-frame glasses, and bright blue eyes, Logan Cale looked athletically fit. And, in a way, he was—maintaining a rigorous workout schedule in his modern apartment in a seemingly abandoned building just outside Terminal City's toxic borders.
    But beneath his casually stylish, baggy earth-tone trousers, Logan wore an exoskeleton that gave him the ability to walk, a skill stolen from him by the bullet lodged near his spine and regained through the use of the mechanical marvel that he wore all the time now.
    Though wealthy, Logan was far from being one of the idle rich. Instead, he used his money to try to fight government and private sector wrongdoing, working in support of the disadvantaged. Thus, he spent nearly every waking moment as the underground cyberjournalist that the city—and now much of the nation—knew as a mysterious voice and an image limited to those piercing blue eyes: Eyes Only. Barely a handful of people knew that Logan led this double life; another handful thought he was an agent of Eyes Only. But Max knew the truth—she had been working with him for several years now.
    “I see you're reading Sketchy's latest attempt at a Pulitzer,” Logan said.
    “Oh yeah. He's gonna pay.”
    “Ooooh . . . you sound so sultry . . . enigmatic, even . . .”
    She slapped at him with the tabloid, but she couldn't hold back the grin. “Coal in your stocking this year—definitely coal.”
    “We can always use the fuel,” he said. “You know what I want for Christmas? What I really want?”
    “No. But I bet you're gonna tell me.”
    He reached his gloved hand out and took her black leather-gloved hand in his. He squeezed. “That's what I want,” he said. “Only . . . I wish it was you and me . . .”
    “With the gloves off?”
    He grinned, almost shyly; but what he said was rather bold: “At least.”
    Max loved this man.
    She loved him, he loved her, and they should have been holding hands right now, really holding hands . . . Hell, they should have been living happily ever after, starting a long time ago . . .
    “We should be living happily ever after, about now,” she blurted, sharing the thought. “Don't you think?”
    “We could be facing a much bleaker Christmas.”
    “Only here we sit,” she said, ignoring his remark, “governing a biotech wasteland turned Jamestown for transgenics.”
    “Don't be so hard on the place. Or yourself. You've accomplished so much.”
    Calling Terminal City a Jamestown had been harsh, she knew—“Jamestown” referred to the modern-day Hoovervilles that had sprung up post-Pulse and were named after then-President Michael James. Terminal City had become much more than that.
    “Yes, we could be facing a much bleaker Christmas,” she finally admitted. “I don't know what's wrong with me, Logan—it's like I have an itch I can't scratch.”
    He gave her a look. “I know the feeling.”
    Max damn near blushed.
    She waved for Gem to bring a cup of coffee for Logan.
    The real reason she and Logan weren't living happily ever after, of course, was because of a late and very unlamented blonde bitch Max had known only as Renfro. This was back at Manticore HQ—not long before Max had burned the place to the ground—where Renfro planted a designer virus inside Max, a time bomb ticking down to kill Logan.
    Basically, Renfro had made Logan allergic to Max's touch—fatally so.
    Christmas always brought thoughts of home, didn't it? Max reflected. And like it or not, to her and the other transgenics—whether the “normal”-looking X5s or the mutated freaks like Joshua and Dix—Manticore had been home.
    The result of genetic experimentation on a scale unheard of in the rest of the world, the Manticore refugees were