All of Us -- Chapter 5

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.).

“…yeah, I guess it would be hard to believe for him if he really was that old,” Max said. “I know. It would have been nice to have seriously experienced that pre-Pulse.” She looked up and saw Zack enter in the apartment. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Jondy. Yeah, I know. Yes, he is. Okay, I’ll see you then. ‘Bye.” She disconnected the phone and threw it on the coffee table and walked up to Zack and gave him a hug and a kiss. “Hey. How was it down in weapons storage?”

“Supplies are good,” Zack told her. “Those X5s that brought in those weapons brought them in disassembled so we spent most of the shift putting them together.” He shrugged. “One of the other two X5s that were on shift with me decided that he wanted to give me crap when I was putting together this newer-model semi about how could I know how to put it together when it came out post-’09 and you can guess the rest. He probably is on his way to see someone down in the med bay for ice for his split lip.”

“That’s my man,” Max said. She grinned wickedly. “Didn’t want to admit to him that Becky showed you how to put that gun together, huh?”

Zack mock glared at her. “I learned how to do it myself.” He sighed. “I haven’t heard back from Wayne yet about the results from Little Max’s blood test. He told me before he went out a couple of hours ago to the motel that Jace and Jondy are staying for the night that it shouldn’t take too long with the equipment that they managed to pick up earlier this week.”

“I’m impressed,” Max commented. “That they managed to score medical equipment like that and that Wayne knows how to use it. Self-taught?”

“Not exactly,” Zack said. “A couple of years ago when Wayne was living in Alabama, he lied about his age and put himself through medical school. I was pretty pissed off about it initially, but Wayne insisted that he used a fake name and took every other precaution that he could think of short of not enrolling in medical school at all and I finally told him that it was fine but I would relocate him the second that he got the M.D. He said fine and that was what happened.” He shrugged. “Then Wayne ended up relocating again a few months later when I accidentally compromised everyone after Lydecker let me loose to try to bring everyone back to Manticore so I heard it from him a lot when I checked up on him after he moved to Mississippi.”

“And then you heard it from him a lot just because of the fact that he was in Mississippi at all,” Max said, recalling how when she and Wayne were catching up on each other’s lives the month before, Wayne had complained about the town where he’d lived in.

“I finally let him move to Savannah to shut him up,” Zack admitted. “Even I have my limits.”

“Well, you don’t have to worry about that again,” Max said. “We’re all here, or at least we will be tomorrow if that DNA analysis that Wayne and the other people down in the med bay are doing on Little Max says that she’s also immune to the toxic crap that’s still floating around in the air in this area.”

Zack nodded and turned to look out of the window. “We are this close to being all together again and I love it, don’t get me wrong. This just almost feels too good to be true. This isn’t going to last forever, Max. Things are good right now, but at some point White’s going to press in on us and things will go to hell in a hurry when that happens. I don’t want to let my guard down completely.”

“I’m not asking you to completely let your guard down,” Max said. “We do need to stay alert in case White decides that the bruising on his ego has gone down enough for him to take another major shot at us. You should enjoy the moment, though. We’ve gone a long way just to at least get this. Our family together…you and I…we’ve dreamed about things like this for so long and now everything’s coming together on that front and we should take at least a moment to enjoy it.”

“I’m enjoying this,” Zack assured her. “Trust me. I’m happy about all of this.”

Max nodded understandingly. “But it’s just in your nature to be on guard against trouble all the time. I know you. It’s cool.” She sighed impatiently. “What isn’t cool is waiting for Wayne to call with those damn results. I want to see Jondy and Jace again and meet my only niece for the first time.”

“You’ll see them tomorrow,” Zack said. “Even if the test results say that Little Max isn’t immune to the toxins here, you and everybody will see the three of them tomorrow. Besides, it’s still shorter than I’d originally thought that it would be. I only called Jace and Jondy and told them to come here to Seattle and Terminal City five days ago. I thought that it would take at least a day or two longer for them to get here than it actually did. Jondy really made some good time.”

“She did,” Max agreed. “I guess that Shark DNA of ours comes in handy, especially when you need to drive through the night for consecutive nights.” She sat back down on the couch. “So, do you have any plans for tonight? We could probably find something to do.” She sighed. “I want to go out and race you on our bikes, but that’d be a little risky considering I don’t have a helmet like you do.”

Zack shrugged. “You could always borrow Becky’s helmet. I don’t think that she’d mind.” He sat down beside Max. “I could stretch my legs, so to speak. It’s not that I mind staying in Terminal City, it’s actually a pretty large area, but…”

“I know the feeling,” Max said. “It’s still nice to be able to be somewhere where you don’t have to hide who you are. I like the feeling of being able to walk outside with my hair up and not having to worry about having somebody seeing my barcode and immediately freaking out and setting military or NSA assholes on my tail. It’s great.”

“It is,” Zack agreed. They sat silently together on the couch for a few moments before Zack’s cell phone rang. He looked at the number and answered it. “What have you got for me, Wayne?” He listened for a few moments before he smiled a little. “That’s great. That’s definitely a relief. Not until later? That does make sense. Yeah, they’ll be coming through the west gate. I’m not sure where we’ll all meet. I haven’t decided that yet. Okay, get to it then. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.” He disconnected. “The tests on Little Max came up fine. She inherited Jace’s immunity to nuclear and other toxic material and waste. Wayne also said something about Jace’s X5 genes being dominant in Little Max in certain areas or something like that, it was some kind of medical crap that even I have a hard time understanding, but the short of it is that she will most likely show X5 traits as she grows up, just like Case did.” He shrugged. “She’ll be here, so she’ll be safe when that happens. Anyway, I’ll call Jondy tomorrow morning after we’ve all gotten some sleep and we’ll coordinate when and where we’ll meet here in T.C.”

“Good,” Max said. She grinned. “The sun is still setting and we shouldn’t go out to race our bikes until it has definitely set. In the mean time…”

“You read my mind,” Zack said. He got up off of the couch, pulled Max up, and led her into their bedroom.

TBC