A Taste of Everyday -- Chapter 1

Disclaimer: The TV show Dark Angel, all of the characters that appeared on it (Max, Zack, Zane, 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 (Rena/X5-120, etc.).

Notes: This will be written in first person from Rena’s point-of-view.

I looked over at Zack as we sat behind the dumpster, waiting to make sure that we were in the clear. Zack was not very happy with me. Good, I’m not happy with him either. I haven’t been too thrilled with him for the past two-and-a-half, almost three months now. I think it might be because he separated me and Zane back at the beginning of October. I don’t know. All I know is that as much as I love my oldest brother and as glad I am that he’s only a phone call away if I need him, which I have been a lot lately, I have to fight the urge to wring his neck every time that I see him. I’d say that the feeling is mutual right now.

“Rena, how many times have I told you to be careful?” he hissed. “Damnit, we both almost got caught!”

“No shit!” I whispered back. “Do you think that I actually like almost getting caught by Manticore? I don’t care what you’re believing right now, I do not do this on purpose!”

“I didn’t think that,” Zack said.

“Okay, maybe you’re right,” I conceded.

We waited for a few more minutes before Zack finally gestured that we were in the clear and we crawled out from behind the dumpster and began to run to find some kind of transportation. “I was thinking about moving you again, anyway,” Zack admitted. “Regardless of whether you’d gotten in trouble or not.”

“Oh? Where?” I couldn’t help hoping that he’d put me and Zane back together, or maybe even take me to Max or Jondy, though I knew logically that he wouldn’t. It was the plan all along, having more than one of us together when he’d already found us would be compromising op sec, blah, blah, blah whoopee.

“Texas,” Zack told me. “In the Dallas area. I’m going to put you into the foster care system there.”

“Are you out of your mind?” I wondered. “Please refresh my memory because I can’t quite remember who it was the night that Jack died when we came up with the plan that foster homes were most likely a bad idea because if we were in the system, that would just make it that much easier for Lydecker to find us if we did something dumb.”

“I said ‘most likely,’” Zack reminded me. “You need to calm down, Rena. I was down in the Dallas area not too long ago and I did some recon. The foster care system there is better than in most of the other places that I’ve been so far and I think that it would actually be good for you if you were grounded in one place for awhile. You’ll definitely have the contact number if you need to use it and we’ll work out a plan if you need to get out of your foster home immediately before you can contact me, but I think that this is the best idea for you for now.”

“Okay, fine,” I said reluctantly. “I’ll go along with this. I guess that you already have things set up so that I don’t actually have a choice about whether or not to go along with this.”

“More or less,” Zack confirmed. “I’ve got your identity set up.” He took off the backpack that he’d been wearing and opened it and handed me some papers. “Give them back to me when you’re done so that I can hand them in to the right people.”

“I will,” I promised. “’Jane Michelle Richardson’. I guess I should be happy that you didn’t give me a really boring last name like Smith or something like that.”

“Your cover story is written down on that piece of paper that’s underneath the fake birth certificate,” Zack said. “You and your parents had just moved to Texas from Nebraska and you were staying at a motel until you could find a house or an apartment in the area. The place that the three of you had been staying at burned down right after your parents had you run out to the grocery store down the street to get some milk. The motel fire really did happen. It was caused by faulty wiring and the entire place burned to the ground. This fits in beautifully with your cover story because the motel accepted only cash and kept all of it’s records on paper as a precaution since the Pulse and those all burned in the fire. There’s no way for anybody to question the credibility of your story.”

I nodded. I knew how meticulous Zack could be and he wouldn’t give me a cover story unless there really was no feasible way that it could be busted. “It sounds good to me.” I handed Zack back the fake birth certificate and the other papers. “When do we leave for Texas?”

“Right now,” Zack told me. “You don’t really need to travel with anything, since presumably most if not all of your things burned in the motel fire. The birth certificate was allegedly sent down from your supposed original hometown in Nebraska. Like I said, I’ve got everything set up. I’ll get this into the local foster system’s hands when we get to Texas and then I’ll make sure that you go where you need to go.”

“I hope that I’ll get into a home right away,” I said. “I hate the idea of waiting around in some dumb group home.”

“Oh?” Zack questioned.

“Yeah,” I said. “It’d almost be like back at Manticore. While we wouldn’t be tortured like we were back in Wyoming, I’d be surrounded by other kids like we were and it’d be too like being in the barracks when we were off duty.”

“I miss everybody too,” Zack admitted. “I haven’t found that many of you yet.” He shrugged. “I don’t know about you getting into a home right away, but I guess you just have to cross your fingers and hope for the best. Oh, do you have any Tryptophan?”

“No,” I said. “Why Tryptophan? Isn’t it that stuff in turkey and milk?”

“Yeah,” Zack said. “It’ll control our seizures. It won’t cure them, but if we start to get a seizure and we take some of them, it’ll stop the seizure. We’ll get some for you before we get to Texas.”

“Okay.” I took a deep breath. “Let’s go.” Texas, here we come…

TBC