All of Us -- Chapter 13

Disclaimer: The TV show Dark Angel, all of the characters that appeared on it (Max, Zack, Alec, etc.), and everything else that has to do with the show belong to their respective owners, not to me. No money is being made off of this fic. I only own the original characters (Becky/X6-405, etc.).

“I hate this crap,” Riley grumbled as she sifted through debris in a room in a building in Terminal City. “I wish this building wasn’t at as good of a vantage point for the surrounding area so that cleaning it up wasn’t as critical.”

Max laughed. “You were at Manticore longer than I was. You should know better than I do that sometimes even we have to do grunt work.”

“I tried to avoid the grunt work as much as possible,” Riley said.

“Wow, I didn’t know that it was possible to have a spoiled brat in Manticore,” Rena said in mock surprise. “Did you know that, Sasha?”

“Very funny,” Riley commented.

“I’m just kidding,” Rena assured Riley. “I know you are far from spoiled.”

“You want to talk about spoiled brats, try hanging around my old unit mate 714,” Sasha said. “Wow. I have never met a more prissy, spoiled little bitch in my life. I can only imagine what it must have been like for her poor breeding partner when they were paired up in the spring. ‘Don’t do that, 003. You’ll mess up my hair.’ ‘003, how many times have I told you that I…’” She trailed off and smirked when she saw Riley and Max and Rena laughing. “Yeah, and guess who had to share a hotel room with her and the Queen Skank Whore and 908 when we were assigned to go on a mission to France when I was fourteen?”

Riley’s jaw dropped. “They actually had you four share a room? What was Renfro smoking?”

“Details, s’il vous plait?” Rena asked.

“Yeah, this sounds good,” Max said.

“What’s to say? I’ve told you Diane’s deal and I just told you what was 714’s problem and 908 was also severely screwed up.” Sasha shrugged. “Maybe even the worse in our unit.”

“Maybe even the worse in your unit?” Riley repeated incredulously. “If what I’ve heard through the Manticore grapevine was true, 908 was severely fucked in the head.”

“It’s true,” Sasha said. “I could go on and on about it—“

“Please don’t, I saw the whole damn thing and I don’t feel like listening to the story,” Biggs’ voice interrupted.

Max rolled her eyes and put a hand to the earpiece that she was wearing. “For crying out loud, Biggs, were you listening to our whole conversation? Didn’t anybody tell you when you were a child that eavesdropping is rude as hell?”

“Nope, sorry,” Biggs said cheerfully.

“Do that again and somebody won’t be—“ Sasha started to say teasingly.

Biggs quickly cut her off. “Okay, Sasha. I’m sorry. I won’t eavesdrop on your girls again.”

“You’ve really got him by the balls, don’t you?” Rena asked. She sounded impressed.

“You know it, sis,” Sasha said proudly.

“Please behave,” Zack said as he entered the floor. “Max, our shift’s up. We’ve got enough time to get back to our apartment and shower before we need to go over those plans for the bank job that we’re going to pull tonight.”

Max looked at her watch. “Damn, you’re right. I’ll see you guys later.”

“See you later, Maxie,” Rena said. “Sasha, do you want to start on the crap that’s one floor up?”

“Sure,” Sasha agreed. “I think I’m at a good stopping place on this floor.”

“And leave me to continue with this crap heap all by myself? Your generosity knows no bounds,” Riley said sarcastically.

“Don’t worry,” Max said. “There should be two people coming in to replace me and Zack any minute now. If one of them doesn’t help you, just beat the crap out of them.”

Riley perked up. “Yeah, that sounds like fun. Thanks.”

“Don’t encourage her,” Sasha teased as she and Rena headed for the stairs and walked up to the next floor.

“Very funny,” Max said. She followed Zack to the stairs and they walked down them until they got to the ground floor and out of the building, pausing for a moment to wave at the X5 and the anomaly that walked in to replace them on cleanup duty. “So, we’ve got about an hour-and-a-half. That should also give us enough time to have something to eat before we go over our plans instead of eating while we go over our plans, even with us showering separately.”

Zack leaned close to her ear and lowered his voice. “Who said anything about us showering separately?”

Max grinned. “Beats me.” They started heading a little quicker towards their apartment.

“And they go merrily on their way,” Sasha commented as she watched Max and Zack leave from the window of the room she and Rena were in.

“They’ll be a lot more than just merry when they actually get to their apartment,” Rena said, snickering.

“Thanks for that one, Captain Obvious,” Sasha teased. She turned around and surveyed the room. “Damn, just this one room is going to take forever to clean up. I hope more of us show up here soon if for no other reason than to help us clean up this crap.”

“You and me both,” Rena said. She walked over to the large hole that was in the wall. “What is this crap, some idiot was in the process of doing some do-it-yourself remodeling when another random idiot spilled all that toxic material in the area? I could do a better job than this and I’ve never done construction before.”

“Hey, at this rate you could be doing it soon,” Sasha remarked.

“Now who’s Captain Obvious?” Rena teased.

“Thank you very much, little sister,” Sasha said.

“Little sister? We’re twins for crying out loud,” Rena said.

“I’m still older,” Sasha reminded her.

“By two freakin’ minutes,” Rena said. “I was supposed to be older. Hell, I was supposed to just be me. Mother Nature was obviously in a bad mood when they implanted my embryo into our surrogate way back when in Wyoming because look who decided to join the party!”

“She must have been in a worse mood when she had the geneticists put together your embryo in the first place,” Sasha said sweetly.

Biggs sat on the roof, struggling with the surveillance system that he was supposed to be setting up. He sighed and put down his tools and turned his earpiece mic on and started to say something when he heard Rena’s and Sasha’s voices arguing.

“—look who decided to join the party!”

“She must have been in a worse mood when she had the geneticists put together your embryo in the first place.”

“Sweetheart, next time you talk into your comm. device, don’t forget to turn the mic off when you’re done,” Biggs said, trying to hold in his laughter.

Sasha swore. “Damn. Hey, what did I tell you about eavesdropping?”

“I wasn’t eavesdropping on purpose,” Biggs pointed out. “I was about to call back into control that I was having problems with getting the damn surveillance system up and running and you happened to have your mic still on. That isn’t my fault, is it?”

“I’m going to step through the hole in the wall and clean up in the hallway while you two have your argument,” Rena said.

“I’m sorry, Sasha,” Biggs apologized. “I didn’t mean to snap at you.”

“It’s okay,” Sasha said. “Even the best of couples have their arguments. I should get back to work and this time I promise to turn the mic off when I’m not using it.”

Biggs laughed. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” Sasha replied.

Biggs grinned and decided to give the surveillance system another try. He reached for one of his tools when something caught his eye and he turned in that direction. Next to the building that he and the others were working on was the west security fence and then a side street and then a building that had recently been leveled. Next to the leveled building was a building that was several stories smaller than the one where Biggs was, which was where he’d seen the movement. Someone was there. I know that I saw somebody. “Control, this is Biggs. I saw movement on the roof of 122 West Maple. Do you copy?”

“We copy, Biggs,” Dix replied. “Do you have that surveillance system running yet?”

“No, I’m having trouble getting it going. I was going to radio in for help with it in another minutes if it still wasn’t working,” Biggs said. “Hey, Riley, your floor is level with the roof on 122 West Maple. Are you or anybody else near a window where you can get a good view of it?”

“Not right now, but Val and I can go and find one,” Riley reported.

“Do that. Just in case.” He zoomed in on the roof in question and remained still for a few moments before his eyes widened. “RPG! Evacuate now!”

“Tell me again what you want to do with me when we get back to the apartment?” Max asked Zack. She smiled flirtatiously.

“You’ve got a photographic memory, but if you insist…” Zack said. “First, I’m going to get you to—“ They stopped in their tracks and instinctively shielded their faces when they heard an explosion go off nearby. “What the hell?” He and Max quickly put their earpieces back in. “What the hell just happened?”

“Someone fired an RPG from the roof of 122 West Maple right at us,” Biggs said frantically.

“Did you see exactly who fired it?” Max asked as she and Zack raced back towards the building. They saw Biggs dusting himself off after jumping off of the roof of the building and waited for him to come over.

“No,” Biggs said when he’d reached the other two X5s. “All I could tell was that it was definitely a woman. I couldn’t get a better visual on her.” He heard Max and Zack approaching him at the same time he heard glass shatter and then someone landing from where they had jumped. He blurred over to the person. “Sasha? Baby, are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Sasha assured her. She coughed. “Me and…” She looked around and became frantic. “Where’s Rena? She was behind me in the hallway when the RPG hit and…oh my God, Riley and Val were on the floor where it hit! Where are they? Are they all right?!”

“Stay calm,” Zack said. He tried to keep his own panic down. “Just stay calm, Sasha. I’m sure they’re fine.” He put a hand to his earpiece. “Rena, Riley, anybody in the building, this is Zack. Are you guys okay?” There was no answer. “Are you guys okay?” He turned when he heard the building’s door open, but it was the anomaly. “Have you seen Rena or Riley or Val?”

“Those X5s and the X6? No,” the anomaly said. He shook his head. “I was only on the third floor.”

“Damnit, damnit, damnit,” Zack swore. “Control, where the hell is some help here? We’ve got a fire going in 118 West Maple and there’s three people still in the building, status unknown.”

“Fire teams and med teams are on their way,” Dix replied.

“What the hell…holy shit,” Becky said as she and Jeff approached the scene. “What’s going on?”

“RPG hit on the fifth floor,” Max said. “We don’t know exactly who fired it…” But take a wild fucking guess who gave the order to fire it on us!

Becky’s expression darkened, as if she knew what Max was thinking. “Damn. Oh shit, are there people still in there?”

“Yeah,” Biggs said grimly. He had his arm around a still-panicky Sasha. “Rena’s trapped probably on the sixth floor and Val and…” He hesitated when he saw Jeff. “…Riley were as far as we knew on the fifth floor when it hit.”

Jeff’s face went pale. “Oh shit, oh shit…”

“Calm down,” Becky said. “As soon as the fire crew gets here, you can go in with them and get Riley out. I’m sure she’s fine. Keep it together, Jeff. She’ll be just fine.” Jeff nodded and Becky gave his shoulder a squeeze. “It’ll be okay.”

“Yeah, it will be,” Riley barely managed to say before coughing almost uncontrollably.

Jeff jumped and turned around and saw her standing in front of him, covered in soot and sighed in relief. “Damn, Riley, I thought that you might have died!”

“So did I for a second.” Riley had to pause for another coughing fit. “I heard the RPG coming and I hit the deck and then I dove for the stairs and I barely made it before the damn thing hit the wall on the other side of the building and blew the hell up. That must have been one of the new models because that packed a huge punch. The fifth floor started to catch fire pretty quickly. I would have made it out sooner but I fell when the RPG hit and shook the building up a little and I hurt my ankle and that slowed me down and I wanted to try to get Val out but I couldn’t...” She started coughing again.

“Take it easy. Try to take deep breaths,” Max said. “Do you know anything about Rena and Val? We haven’t seen either of them yet.”

“As far as I know, Rena was with Sasha one floor above me when the grenade hit,” Riley said. She shook her head grimly. “Val was in one of the other rooms on the fifth floor closer to where the grenade hit. I didn’t see her when I was getting out of the building and I like I said before, I tried to get her out of the building but I couldn’t go for her because the heat from the fire was too intense for me to handle without the proper equipment and I ended up sucking down some smoke. Damn, I should have tried anyway.”

“You definitely would have died,” Jeff commented distantly, looking up at the fire.

“Damn, where the hell are the fire and medical teams?” Zack said, trying to keep his worry for Rena under control.

“Here they are,” Becky said, seeing the vehicles screech to a stop and transgenics rush out.

“Is anybody still in there?” Zane asked as he and Krit and Wayne ran over to them, Zane and Krit tugging on the last of their equipment.

“Val, that X5 that came in two days ago, is still up on the fifth floor,” Zack said. He took a deep breath. “Rena is up on the sixth floor. We haven’t heard a peep from her yet.”

“Oh my God,” Wayne murmured.

Zane paled. “No…” He shook himself. “Let’s get in there, guys.”

“I’m going with you,” Zack said immediately. Max sucked in a breath, but didn’t say anything.

Zane threw Zack some equipment. “Good thing Krit trained you on this crap last week, huh?”

“Yeah,” Zack agreed. “Who else is coming in and who is spraying from the outside?”

“You, me, Zane, Jay, Brian, and Dean are going in,” Krit said. “The other guys are getting the hoses hooked up and ready to go. Wayne’s in charge of the paramedic group that’s waiting here.”

“Get her out of there and I’ll make sure that she’ll be fine,” Wayne told them.

“Let’s go,” Zack said. He, Krit, Zane, and the other three disappeared inside of the building.

“Come on, come on,” Wayne muttered, his eyes never leaving the building. “Come on, Rena. Come on, guys.”

Becky bit her lip gripped Jeff’s hand tightly. Max held on to Jondy, who had just arrived, with one hand, and ran her other hand through her hair nervously. Biggs held Sasha, who was still crying hysterically, and the others just watched as the transgenic firefighters got the fire under control. The minutes passed more painfully than any Psy Ops visit they had ever experienced until finally Zack and Zane emerged from the building with Rena in Zane’s arms. She was unconscious, but appeared to be breathing. Wayne immediately ran over to Zane and took Rena from him and rushed her over to one of the ambulances and he and Maggie and one of the other medics got her loaded in and set up and they drove off to the med bay. Max and Becky rushed up to Zack and Zane.

“Thank goodness that you’re okay,” Max said, throwing her arms around Zack. “Did you guys find Val?”

Zack nodded grimly and gestured to where Krit and Brian were carrying a badly burned body over to one of the other ambulances and took off his equipment. “She was dead when they got to her. She’s burned pretty much all over, but Jay said that it looked like a broken neck caused from the shockwave of the grenade exploding catching her and throwing her against a wall killed her. Damn.” He removed the last piece and handed it over to one of the other firefighting transgenics and took a deep breath. “Come on. Let’s get to the med bay and make sure that Rena’s going to be fine.”

TBC