All of Us -- Chapter 15

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.).

“How does the crowd look out there today?” Luke asked the transgenics on sentry duty a few days later.

“About the same as it’s been since the fire,” one of them replied. “They haven’t gotten beyond what the local police and military units can handle.”

“That’s good,” Luke said.

“Yet,” Brin said from where she stood in the crowd outside.

“What do you mean?” Zack asked.

“I just overheard a phone conversation between the commander out here and his superior,” Brin said. “They’re going to send somebody out from the pentagon to take charge of the military forces outside of Terminal City.”

“I’m flattered,” Alec remarked. “We must really mean a lot to them if they’re sending somebody from the pentagon itself to watch over us and make sure that we’re safe in our beds.”

Max smacked him across the head. “Did you catch any names?”

“No,” Brin said. “The only information that I was able to pick up on was that it’s someone from the pentagon, I believe a general. The good news is that not many, if any, additional forces are being sent along with him or her. Someone is being sent to serve as a second-in-command for the person, but I think that’s it.”

“Good to know,” Luke commented. He checked the time on the clock on his computer. “It’s time for you to come back in, Brin. Dane is on his way to relieve you right now.”

“I copy,” Brin said. “I’m heading in. I’ll see you at our apartment later, Alec. I’ll pick up Anthony from Biggs and Sasha on my way back there.”

“Gotcha,” Alec said. “I’ll see you later.” He yawned.

“Not a night person?” Max teased.

“No, I just haven’t gotten my minimum three hours of sleep yet,” Alec said. “It’s one-thirty in the morning and my shift here in control isn’t over until two.”

“You can hold out for half an hour, can’t you?” Max said sweetly. “Maybe you can’t, you did fall asleep on your feet that one time when you were in Alaska. I believe that you were talking with a young woman that you were hoping to get into your bed that night since you had off-hours then.”

Alec looked annoyed. “Who told you that? Biggs or Jeff?”

“Since I actually like both of them, I’m not going to tell you who it was that told me about that,” Max said. She shook her head and went back to the blueprints that she was looking at on the computer that she was sitting in front of. “I found something.”

“Show me,” Luke said.

“Right here,” Max told him. She pointed to an area on the blueprints. “Pacific Office Supply had their biggest shop here in Terminal City. It’s that building with the crappy blue sign over near the gym. Their warehouse was over in sector 4 and they put in a tunnel that directly connects the store with the warehouse. The warehouse was officially shut down back in 2017 and it’s been abandoned ever since. We’ve got our first non-sewer underground access to Terminal City.”

“Brilliant,” Luke said. “Dix is gonna be sorry that he didn’t pick up on this before he went to catch some sleep. Oh, well, we all need to sleep sometime.”

“Even me,” Max agreed. “I got two hours last night, so I’m good for at least a week.”

“Alec, hand me the highlighter?” Zack muttered as he looked over some plans.

“Sure, buddy,” Alec said. He passed it over to Zack and then leaned over the table that they were sitting at so he could get a better look at the plans that they were going over. “Found a way into the place?”

“Yeah,” Zack said. “Right here, over by the loading area.”

“Not bad,” Alec commented. “Plus, if you send somebody over here some time before we actually execute this thing to work on the vent, it’ll save us at least a good thirty or forty minutes. I think we should...”

“Hold on a second there, boys,” Luke interrupted. “Got a group of X6s coming in.”

“How many?” Alec asked.

“Five of them,” Luke said. “X6-367, X6-144, X6-887, X6-029, and X6-570. All of them from Becky’s unit.”

“Want to do the honors?” Max said to Zack. Zack grinned and took out his cell phone and speed dialed Becky and waited for her to answer.

Becky groaned when her cell phone’s ringing woke her up. I only got to sleep an hour ago. Is it too much to ask for another hour of sleep? I only sleep two hours a night to begin with! She grabbed the phone, saw who was calling, and answered it. “What’s going on, Zack? Is something wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” Zack said. “As a matter of fact, the rest of your family just showed up. They’re on their way over to the control room to check in now.”

Becky sat up in bed and grinned. “Are you serious? All five of them? They’re here?”

“All of the rest of your family,” Zack confirmed.

“I’ll wake up Maggie and call the others and we’ll be down there as soon as we can,” Becky promised. She disconnected and got up and quickly got dressed and ran into Maggie’s room and shook her awake. “Maggie, get up right now.”

“Becky, I swear this better be good,” Maggie said.

“The others just got into T.C.,” Becky said.

Maggie practically flew out of her bed. “Let me get dressed. I’ll be ready in a second.”

“Gotcha,” Becky said. She went into the living room of the apartment and called the rest of her siblings. When Maggie was finished getting dressed, she and Becky left the apartment and ran over to the control room and stopped when they saw the five members of their family who had just arrived. “You’re here!”

“405!” 367 squealed. She ran over to Becky and hugged her. “You’re okay!”

“So are you,” Becky said. “I see you’re still bouncy as ever at this time of night.”

“You can’t cure shark DNA,” 367 told her, grinning.

“You’ve got a name now?” Becky asked.

“Karen,” 367 said.

“I’m Brent,” 570 piped up.

“Liesel,” 029 said.

“Dalton,” 887 said.

“Matt,” 144 told them.

“Becky,” Becky said. She hugged the other four and stood and watched with a big grin on her face as the newly arrived siblings greeted Maggie and Kyle and Kevin and Xavier. She caught sight of Felicia standing in the corner, unsure of what to do, and motioned her over. “This is going to be really weird and it freaked the hell out of Maggie and I when we saw first saw her again, but…Lydecker lied to me nine years ago when 662 was executed for allegedly accidentally shooting that trainer. The execution was botched and they eventually took her to New York and I’ll give you guys the entire story later, I really will, but...662 is alive and well.” No thanks to me, I damn near killed her that night. She shook it off and gestured to Felicia. “Here she is.”

Karen just stood there and stared at Felicia. “You’ve got to be kidding me. Why would Lydecker have lied about this?”

Becky and Felicia both stiffened. “Give me one good reason why I would be joking about something like this, Karen. If you want proof, you can take a look at her barcode. It’s right there in nice black lines,” Becky said. She tried to keep the anger and hurt out of her voice. Karen always did believe in Manticore and had faith in Manticore the most out of any of us. “As for why, he had this nice little research opportunity involving a computer chip that could be implanted into a human brain that fell into his lap and she just happened to be the perfect transgenic comatose at the time guinea pig. How did I know this? The information is in the Manticore database, which I had and still have access to, and was backed up by Lydecker himself. I don’t know where he is right now because after he confirmed 662—Felicia’s—situation, he went back off into hiding because the people in charge in the government want him dead as much as they want us dead.”

“They actually used you like that when you were comatose?” Dalton said. “That’s sick, even for Manticore.”

“That was my reaction,” Maggie agreed.

Karen blew them off. “They performed experiments like that all the time. What was so different about what they did to Felicia?”

“What was so different was that due to that implanted computer chip that I’d had in my brain and the fact that Manticore could treat me like a freaking robot with that thing, I ended up being put in a situation where I hurt and I could have easily killed Becky,” Felicia said angrily. “You know damn well that I would never do that under normal circumstances! I forced Becky to damn near killed me and if Max hadn’t done CPR on me, I would be dead. Becky brought me back to myself and I am damn thankful that she did and I know how much it cost her or it almost cost her to do that so stop acting like an uptight Manticore asshole!”

The others were surprised. Felicia had never gotten angry like that before. “Look, I’m sure that you guys have all had a long day,” Kyle said quietly. “Why don’t you get checked in and find places to stay and we can talk later.”

“He’s right,” Becky agreed. “Even with all this, it’s still really great to see you.”

“It’s great to see you again,” Liesel said. She looked around. “Guys, where’s 392?”

“She’s dead,” Becky said softly. “Back in July, she and Kevin and Maggie and two X5s got caught by the NSA agent who’s in charge of hunting us down and killing us. I went in with Max and Zack and we got them free and we almost all got out the door unscathed but the agent had hidden behind cover and got a shot off at hit Suzanne and she died minutes later.”

“I can’t believe it.” Matt blinked. “Suzanne, you said her name was? She’s dead?”

Becky nodded. “I wish it wasn’t true either, Matt, but she’s dead.”

“Why would they want us dead?” Karen said. “Isn’t Manticore just regrouping? I mean, after something as major as Renfro betraying us I’d say they’d be touchy and would want to bide their time before bringing us back in, but why kill us?”

“Because Manticore is gone and done and over with,” Becky pointed out. “It wasn’t just Renfro who betrayed us by burning Manticore down, it was the entire committee that was in charge of the project who wanted us dead and burnt to a crisp. They wanted us all dead. Manticore is over and good riddance because they put us through hell. Hey, if you believed in Manticore so much, why didn’t you go up to a soldier and say ‘I’m X6-367 and I’m ready to return to base’?”

“Because you ordered us to go to ground,” Karen said.

Becky sighed. “Enough of this. We’ll talk later. It really is great to see you guys.”

“It’s great to see you again,” Karen agreed quietly. The others said goodnight to each other and the five newcomers checked in and they eventually went off to their apartments to go sleep. Becky and Kyle and Felicia remained behind in the control room.

“Damnit,” Becky said. She tried to keep herself composed in front of Kyle and Felicia. “We’re finally back together, all eleven of us, and Karen’s still…Manticore.”

“Some people take longer than others to come around,” Zack reminded her. “My family and I and you figured it out really early on and maybe some others did too, but with some people, if it’s all they knew, it’ll take them longer to figure things out. Don’t worry about it. She’ll come around.”

“I know,” Becky said.

“He’s right,” Kyle said. He managed a grin. “Hey, it was a good thing that you didn’t tell her yet that Zack’s your brother, huh?”

Becky shook her head and laughed and punched him in the shoulder. “Yeah, and it’s a good thing that you can be an asshole when you need to be. Get back to sleep, Kyle. I’ll see you in the morning on sentry duty.”

“See you then,” Kyle said. He went back to his apartment.

“I’m really sorry about that, Felicia,” Becky apologized.

“You don’t have anything to be sorry about,” Felicia said. “Zack’s right. Soon enough, Karen will come around.” She yawned. “I better get back to my apartment and get back to sleep.”

“Go. You sound exhausted,” Becky said. She smiled at Felicia and waved as Felicia left the control room.

“Are you okay?” Max asked.

“I will be,” Becky said. “I’ll just wait until Maggie’s asleep and won’t wake up at a pindrop and I’ll cry my eyes out about this then.”

Max and Zack looked at her worriedly. “Are you serious or sarcastic?” Zack asked.

“I don’t even know,” Becky said, shrugging.

“You definitely look exhausted,” Zack said. “I’ll walk you back to your apartment, okay?”

“I could use the company,” Becky admitted.

“I’ll work with Alec on those plans until you get back,” Max offered.

“Thanks,” Zack said. He gave Max a quick kiss on the lips and he and Becky left.

TBC