The clones past.

The girl was slightly taken aback by Max's bluntness and it showed in her face. Max didn't like this, having another person and she didn't know, that looked exactly like her, sounded exactly like her. It made her uneasy.

"The names Maria by the way," the girl said only to met by Max's cold glare. "Jeez..." she muttered, pulling the robe she wore tighter around her. Her feet curling up underneath her legs. A pang of guilt hit Max. This girl looked just like her, but she was missing the cold exterior that Max had created over the years of living in the real world. She looked younger, more innocent.

Max sighed. "I'm sorry, look. When people from Manticore show up they're always followed by trouble."

"It's okay," Maria said, looking back at Max. "It's kinda freaky seeing you too. I guess this is your town right. I figure I owe you an explanation. It was a few months ago, I was in a special ops mission in Northern California when out of nowhere I lost contact with Manticore. It turned out the whole place had burnt down. Some Eyes Only guy had tipped the lid off the whole operation, so the government blacked everyone out. Plausible undeniably I guess. But it left everyone in the dark and on their own. I had no idea what to do, so I abandoned the mission and started heading north. Closer to Seattle I get the more I hear about Eyes Only and these transgenic mutants. So I figure might as well check Seattle out."

"So you come all the way here to be a stripper?"

"Girls gotta pay the rent, something wrong with being a stripper?"

"No, uhh. I mean." Max replied lamely. "It's just weird seeing you up on the stage."

Maria shrugged. "Pay's good, it's only a couple hours a night. I mean, they made us look like this for a reason right."

"What do you mean?"

"They had control of every little piece of DNA in our bodies. It's not by chance that we look like we do. Manticore wanted us to turn the heads of every guy in the room. We're designed for espionage, covert ops. Our looks are just another tool to use to get the job done" A strange look crossed Maria's features and for the second time that night Max felt bad for the women. Max had escaped, but Maria. she had received the full brunt of Manticores training. While Max was hanging with her friends, eating dinners with Logan she was out there doing whatever it took to do Manticores dirty work.

"Oh," Max really was at a lost for words. "Well, now that you're in Seattle, what now?"