All of Us -- Chapter 4

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’m glad that I don’t have to actually be in there with the babies,” Zack muttered the next day as he, Max, and Zane walked over to the building where the nursery was located.

“You’re scared of babies? You’ve dealt with us and you’re scared of babies?” Zane asked.

“The last time I saw any of you at that age, I was four years old,” Zack reminded him. “Plus, I wasn’t the one who dealt with you day in and day out when you were so young. The handlers and the nurses were the ones who took care of stuff like that. I just came to see you at least once a day and I didn’t have complete charge of you until you were two, when you were released to the normal daily activities and to the barracks.” He shrugged. “I was also fearless when I was a kid.”

“Is Zack actually admitting a weakness?” Zane said with exaggerated shock. “Wow, Max, you’ve really softened him up since you two hooked up.”

“I never said that I was scared of babies,” Zack insisted. “They just make me nervous.”

“Oh,” Zane said knowingly. “Let me guess and either of you tell me if I’m wrong—you’re nervous around babies because you’re just starting to think that you might want to be a parent yourself and the idea is scaring the crap out of you. Am I right or am I right?” He grinned when he saw Zack glare at him. “Yep, I’m right.”

“We’ve only discussed it maybe once recently,” Max admitted. “But neither of us is completely ready and I know that neither of us wants to bring a kid into the world with all of this madness going on with White’s freaky cult thing and the whole transgenics being hunted down deal.” She laughed. “I think I had something like this talk with Syl last month when Sasha showed up.”

“Well, here we are,” Zane said when they reached the building. “Come on, bro, let’s go get to work on those rooms on the second floor.” He adjusted the tool bag on his shoulder. “Have fun watching over the kids, Maxie.”

“Go try not to break too much stuff,” Max teased. She gave Zack a kiss. “I love you. I’ll see you later.”

“I love you too, Maxie,” Zack said. He gave Max one more kiss before he followed Zane into the building. Max smiled and went inside the building herself and down a hall to a room and opened it and went inside. “Hey, I’m here for my shift to help watch the babies.”

“Great,” the woman who was watching the babies said. “You’re early. Where’s 734?”

“She’ll be here soon,” Max told her. “She’s probably trying to get her son ready to bring him here.”

“Good point,” the woman said. “I was never in the breeding program, but I’ve known plenty of people who have children and they told me about how long it would take sometimes to get themselves and the kid ready to go somewhere. I’m X3-072. You can call me Morgan. I’ll stick around until Brin gets here.”

“I’m Max,” Max said. “Thanks.” She looked around the room and all of the babies. “How many breeding program participants are there in Terminal City? I already know of Sasha, Brin, and Diane.”

“So far, we have 30 of the females who have participated in the breeding program here in Terminal City,” Morgan answered. “Those are the successful ones. I’m not counting you.”

Max smirked. “It’s amazing how word gets around, isn’t it?”

Morgan laughed. “Yeah. I think there were a combined total of 450 or so females who successfully participated in the breeding program. We don’t even have a tenth of them here in Terminal City right now, and not even half of those babies are in this nursery right now.”

“Wow.” Max blinked in surprise. “You guys are seriously going to have to expand this place later. So, who are all these kids? I know Jade and Julia over there. Sasha’s on sentry duty right now over by the west gate, I think."

“Right,” Morgan agreed. She pointed to the infant in the nearest bassinet. “This little girl here is Anna. She’s Diane’s daughter.”

“Oh yeah, Diane the Slut,” Max said. Morgan looked at her curiously and she shrugged. “Sasha gave me the 411 on Diane. I guess you weren’t from the Seattle facility.”

“Nope, I was from the New York facility,” Morgan said. They turned to the door and saw Brin enter the room. “Great, there you are!” She walked over to a table and picked up a clipboard and handed it to Max. “Here’s a chart of which babies are in which cribs and their names and who their mothers are.”

Max frowned. “There are designations on here. X11-300, X11-972…” She blinked. “There are eight designations on here, all X11. What’s with that?”

Morgan shrugged. “For some reason, the children of the X4s were born with barcodes. I don’t know how that happened. It must be something in their DNA. Are you guys set over here?”

“Yeah, we’ll be fine,” Brin assured her.

“Great,” Morgan said. “X5-194 and X6-563 will be here to relieve the two of you in three hours. Thanks again.” She left the nursery.

“It looks like just you, me, and these little guys,” Max remarked as she walked around and checked on the babies. Fortunately, all of them were napping.

“Yep,” Brin agreed. She walked over and set Anthony down in a crib before she took her jacket off and hung it from the back of a chair. She took the clipboard and made a note on it. “We’re lucky that Anthony’s the only one who’s up.”

Right on cue, one of the babies started to make whimpering noises. “That’s Jade,” Max said, recognizing the child’s cry. “I’ll get her.” She got up and took Jade out of her crib and checked to see if her diaper was wet. After she saw that it wasn’t, she got a bottle of formula out of the refrigerator and sat down in a chair and started to feed her. “She’s got her mommy’s and her aunt’s appetite doesn’t she?”

“Nobody can guzzle down a bottle of formula like my little guy here,” Brin said proudly. She picked her son back up and sat down in a chair next to Max. “Isn’t that right, Anthony? Aren’t you just the best little boy there ever was?” She tickled him gently and Anthony gurgled happily.

“He really is beautiful,” Max commented. She smirked. “He sure does love the attention. Like father, like son.”

“He’s definitely a lot like Alec,” Brin agreed.

Max noticed the look on Brin’s face as she carefully set the bottle down and burped Jade. “Brin? Is something wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” Brin said. “Things are great. Alec and I are really good friends. We’re raising this incredible child together. I don’t have anything to complain about.”

“Yeah, right,” Max said. She got up and put Jade back in her crib. “I know you better than that. Spill.”

“It’s just—I think that I like Alec as more than a friend,” Brin admitted. “I know I like Alec as more than a friend. I want to tell him how I feel, but I don’t know if he’s completely over his old girlfriend dying. That was a traumatic experience and he’s doing so well, but I don’t know if he’s doing well enough to really seriously date somebody yet and I care about him too much to force this on him.”

“I’m not sure what to tell you,” Max said. “Alec can be the world’s biggest pain-in-the-ass and the king of all smart alecks, but he also never turns his back on a friend and I’ve seen him around Anthony and he seems to me like he’s a great dad. As much as he annoys me, I can honestly say now that he’s one of my best friends and he would be a great guy for you. I guess you can try to ask him how he feels about seriously dating somebody now without going right at the actual issue, but is that even possible? These kinds of things have this habit of blowing up or almost blowing up in your face.”

“Tell me about it,” Brin agreed. “The situation that I was in with the last serious boyfriend I’d had before I’d gotten sick and re-captured by Manticore was kind of like that, only he’d wanted to marry me. We’d been dating for three months by then and we’d started to sleep together and he just popped the question. I didn’t feel that way about him. I don’t know if I would have if things had been different and I hadn’t gotten sick later and all of that. I told him nicely that I wasn’t ready and he said that he was and we started to have a screaming match, but then we calmed down and that was that. I think for whatever reason, he wanted to get married quickly because right before I got sick and bailed out of town to Seattle, I saw him when I went grocery shopping. He was with his new wife. They’d apparently eloped to Vegas the week before.”

“That’s still a hell of a lot better ending than my last serious pre-Zack relationship,” Max said. She shuddered. Even after seven months, it still hurts and angers me to know how Logan betrayed me. After everything we’d been through… “I still get pissed off and feel hurt when I think about Logan. It just boggles my mind that he couldn’t wrap his head around the fact that Zack’s the one that I’ve wanted all along.”

“How is it with you and Zack?” Brin asked.

Max grinned. “Fantastic. It’s better than fantastic. I’m not just talking about the sex…” She purposefully trailed off and she and Brin giggled. “…but just everything about our relationship is wonderful. I guess when you finally find the one that you’re meant to be with, it falls into place and it feels better than right.”

“Yeah,” Brin said thoughtfully. “There are definitely times when I get a feeling like that around Alec. It’s not always what would be considered big, major moments, either. A lot of the time it’s moments like when he and I and Anthony are in our apartment together and we’re just sitting around the living room and playing with the baby and it clicks, you know? I feel like we’re a real family and it feels so right that we’re together and raising our son together, except the only problem is that Alec and I aren’t actually together.”

“Keep the hope up,” Max said. “If it’s meant to be, it’ll happen. If not, you’ll still have a great friend and most importantly, a great kid that he helped give you.”

“You’re right.” Brin smiled. “Thanks, Maxie.”

“You’re welcome,” Max said.

TBC