Prophecy -- Chapter 13

Disclaimer:  The TV shows Dark Angel and Supernatural, all of the characters that appeared on them, and everything else that has to do with the shows belong to their respective owners, not to me.  No money is being made off of this fic.  I only own the original characters (Dylan/X6-175, etc.).

Notes:  In the Supernatural universe, this is taking place years later.  Basically, I’m not taking Supernatural and putting it in the Dark Angel timeline.  Everything in this fic in the Supernatural universe will be pretty much AU from “Crossroad Blues” on (as I’m writing this, that was the most recent episode that’s aired on U.S. TV).

Sam Winchester was quiet as he entered his house.  He paused for a few moments before walking over to his living room couch, grabbing the TV remote off of the coffee table, and sitting down on the couch, though he did not turn the television on.  Instead, his gaze drifted over to the various photographs that were displayed around the room and he couldn’t help smiling.

I think Dean had a bigger grin on his face than I did, and I was the one who’d just graduated from law school!  Who did he bribe to take that picture of us, anyway?  The hell if I remember.  God, I was so happy that day.  It was more than just finishing law school.  I really felt like I earned what I’d accomplished.  After killing the demon…I’d gotten my life back.  Sam’s gaze wandered over to the bookcase in the corner of the room, where he’d hidden a silver knife years before, and he couldn’t help laughing a little.  Yeah, not exactly like I’d hoped for back when I was at Stanford, but it’s a life that I chose.  If some of the people at my firm had half of a clue what my other profession is…who would they have committed to an asylum?  Me or them?

Another photograph caught Sam’s attention.  Las Vegas.  I really have no excuse for not figuring that Dean would insist on taking me on a trip to Vegas to celebrate my law school graduation.  A:  I’m psychic, B:  It’s not like there were that many places that could still qualify as places to have a vacation or celebrate something in after the Pulse hit, and C:  Dean!  Why did I let him talk me into taking me there?  I was probably still in too good of a mood to care.  And I did win the bet about one of us getting drunk and waking up married while we were there!

Sam sighed, smiling softly.  But if I didn’t let Dean talk me into going to Vegas, I might not have met back up with Sarah.  The night of our first full day there, I’m sitting at the table in the club, Dean’s at the bar trying to pick up at least one of those two blonds, I turn my head, and there she was.  I couldn’t believe it was her.  We hadn’t talked over the phone in at least a year and hadn’t physically seen each other for longer than that.  But she was real and beautiful…damn, she took my breath away.  How long did we spend talking just that night?  Who knows?  We were barely out of each other’s sight after that night.  I’m almost surprised that I wasn’t the one at one of those twenty-four-seven wedding chapels that week.  I was a goner.  The three months between meeting back up and when we did get married somehow managed to both fly by and take forever.  Weird.

He got up off the couch and went inside the kitchen to make some coffee.  I wish Dean had been as lucky.  He actually really liked Amanda.  He wouldn’t stop talking about how lucky he was that she was the one he’d gotten plastered with and married.  I remember teasing him about how he was finally having luck with redheads, but maybe it was my psychic crap at work.  It sure didn’t last long.  They got drunk, got hitched, Marie was born nine months later, and Amanda was gone a month after that.  The last time any of us saw her was when the divorce was finalized.  Poor Dean.  At least he has Marie.  Sam grinned.  Who is every bit as bad as her father.  I can’t wait until she starts dating!  Oh, Dean, you are going to get one heck of a karma ass-kicking after how you were—and still are, kind of—with women.  That’s gonna be sweet!

“Baby?  Are you down here?”

“I’m in the kitchen,” Sam replied, grinning.  He set the bag of coffee down and walked into the living room to greet his wife.  “Hey, you.”  He wrapped his arms around Sarah and kissed her deeply.  “It’s about time you got up.”

“Very funny,” Sarah laughed.  “Where are the kids?”

“Dropped them off at their play dates.”  Sam released Sarah and started to head back towards the kitchen.  “How late did you get in?  Thanks for not waking me up when you did get back, by the way.”  He quickly turned around so that she couldn’t see him frowning.  Especially considering how little sleep I got after that…was that a premonition?  It’s almost like—

Sarah crossed her arms over her chest.  “You’re welcome, sweetheart.  What’s eating you?”  When Sam turned back around, her expression softened.  “Did you have a premonition last night?  Is somebody in trouble?”

“I wish I knew,” Sam replied.  “I don’t know.  I still need to figure it out.”  He sighed.  “I haven’t had one since that time when I joined Dean when he went after those vampires in Tennessee a couple of months ago.”  He managed a smile.  “Don’t worry, I’ll be fine once I get it sorted out.  It’s a good thing I’ve got the week off.  I’m probably going to end up needing that time.”

“Good.”  Sarah smiled wickedly.  “Since I’m off today as well and it’s just you and me—“  The doorbell rang and she sighed.  “—and your brother expecting food.”  She walked over to the front door and opened it.  “Dean, I just got up so I haven’t made breakfast yet.”

“Did I say anything?” Dean asked innocently.  “Good morning, Sarah.”  He walked past her and over to his brother.  “Hey, Sammy.”

“Please tell me that you’re going to make breakfast, Aunt Sarah,” ten-year-old Marie said.  “Dad had the bright idea to try to make pancakes this morning.  Do you remember the time when I was six and I was staying with you when Dad and Uncle Sammy were away and Alicia and I talked the babysitter into helping us make cookies when you took Robby to the doctor?”

“It was that bad?” Sarah guessed.  She could clearly recall coming home to find the babysitter passed out on the living room couch and Marie and then four-year-old Alicia mixing ingredients…on the kitchen floor.  That room had nearly been covered in half-mixed cookie dough.

“She’s exaggerating,” Dean said, giving his daughter a warning look.

“I am not,” Marie insisted.  “He says he’s making pancakes for breakfast, I go upstairs to change, and when I get back down, there’s—“

“A mess which I cleaned up,” Dean interrupted.  “Like I’ve been telling you to do with your room for the past week.”

“Look who’s talking, Dad!  When I went in your room yesterday when you were watching TV in there to ask if I could sleep over at Christy’s house, it looked way worse than mine!”  Marie turned to her uncle.  “You should have seen it, Uncle Sammy.  There was this big pile of clothes in one corner and I think Dad was going through his old tape collection again because that was all over the floor, too.  And there was other stuff.”

“Which I cleaned up last night while you were at Christy’s house,” Dean informed Marie.  He turned to glare at Sam, who was snickering at the exchange.  “Laugh it up, Sam.  Just laugh it up.”

“I am, thanks,” Sam said.

“Okay, time out,” Sarah spoke up.  “Since I’m assuming that I am still going to be cooking something for whoever hasn’t eaten yet this morning, does anybody have any requests?”

“Not pancakes, please,” Marie muttered under her breath.

“Hilarious,” Dean remarked.

“Calm down, you guys,” Sam said, trying hard to stifle his laughter.  “You can both relax since neither of you will be doing the cooking.”  He yawned.

“You okay?” Dean asked.  His eyes narrowed as he looked at his younger brother.  “Is something going on, Sam?”

Sam sighed and shook his head.  And I’m the psychic one here.  “I’ll tell you about it later.”

“This is my cue to leave the room, isn’t it?” Marie guessed.

“It looks that way, kiddo,” Dean said.  “I’m sorry.”

Marie shrugged.  “It’s cool.”  She turned around and went upstairs.

“What’s going on, Sam?” Dean asked.  “Did The Shining strike again?”

“Something like that,” Sam admitted.

“Something like that?” Sarah repeated.

“It…”  Sam paused.  “Dean, remember when we had to separate a few weeks before me, Andy, and the others finally brought the Demon down?  When I somehow managed to tap into your memories when I was sleeping?”

Dean nodded.  “Yeah, I remember that.  You somehow managed to do it long distance, too.  I was out in that crappy little town out near San Diego and you were crashing at the Roadhouse.  Why?  Did your brain tune into the Dean special on the History channel again?”

“No,” Sam said.  He frowned.  “I think I might have tapped into the memories of a transgenic.”

“Wait a second,” Dean insisted.  “A transgenic?  As in what those people have been bitching about on the news non-stop for the past couple of months?”

“Yes, a transgenic,” Sam confirmed.  “I don’t know how I did it, but I think that’s what happened.”

“What was this memory like?” Sarah asked.

“It was from the point-of-view of this boy,” Sam recalled.  “He was only a year older than Marie at the time.  When the…memory…began, he was strapped down to some kind of chair.  He was being interrogated.”  He snorted.  “Tortured was more like it.”

“Tortured?” Dean echoed.  “What do you mean, a boy was tortured?”

“I mean, they went above and beyond the call of duty here,” Sam said bitterly.  “Do you remember those old ‘Nam stories that Dad used to tell us sometimes?  Remember the one where Dad stood guard and watched as his commanders interrogated a captured enemy?  What they did to this child makes what Dad saw done to that Viet Cong look like five-star V.I.P. treatment.  This boy had a laser shone directly into one of his eyes, had fingers broken, was whipped, had a fire poker used on him, was choked, and my personal favorite, was electrocuted.  They probably did more to him than what I got to see.  The best part?  It turned out that was just for practice.  It was a test.  Talk about a damn dress rehearsal.”  Sam had to wipe away tears.  Just thinking about what the young transgenic had gone through upset him badly.  “Damnit.”

“They did all of that to an eleven-year-old boy?” Sarah whispered.  “How could anybody do that to a child?”

“Our good old soldiers, that’s who,” Dean told her.  His voice was quiet, but they could all hear the anger in it.  “They were blabbing over and over again on the news how this…what was the name of that whole thing?  Manticore?  Anyway, they said that it had been a secret operation for the military before the transgenics got loose last year.  Any more to the dream, Sammy?”

“Yeah, there was more,” Sam said.  “After the kid finally passed out from the torture, he woke up in an infirmary and then went back to a cell.  These two teenagers, they must have been friends of his, came in a minute later to check in on the boy.  They talked for a minute or two before the boy broke down and started crying.  That was when I woke up.”

“What was the boy’s name?” Sarah asked.

Sam shook his head.  “He didn’t have a name and neither did his two friends.  They just had numbers.”

“Yeah, that one dumb Fed-type that they interviewed a couple of months ago was rambling about how they all had barcodes and their ‘code numbers were shortened into designations.  Man, that guy was a pompous douchebag.”  Dean held out a hand in Sam’s direction.  “Don’t even start, Sam.  I know that it was that Fed that we helped back in ’07 when we got rid of the spirit that was haunting her house that got that St. Louis mess cleared up for me.  She was cool.  This guy was something else.”

“I wasn’t going to say anything,” Sam said.  Naturally, he would have to have mentioned St. Louis.  Not that the one teenager was evil, he was far from it, but…  “But there was more.”

Dean snorted.  “What, somebody came in and started to torture the older guys?”

“No, though they both had mentioned that they’d gone through the same thing when they were the boy’s age,” Sam replied.  He looked Dean right in the eye.  “One of those older boys looked exactly like you.”

“He looked like me?” Dean repeated.  “You mean he kinda resembled me if he turned a certain way, don’t you?”

“No,” Sam told him.  “I mean he looked exactly like you did when you were fifteen years old.  The hair, the freckles, everything.  He even sounded and acted like you did, for crying out loud.”

“This really does get better and better,” Dean remarked.  “You’re saying that there’s an evil transgenic look-alike of yours truly out there somewhere?”

“I didn’t say that,” Sam pointed out.  “Not the evil part, at any rate.  The you look-alike was trying to help the boy.  He wasn’t evil.  None of them were, at least the boy and the other two.  The only one in the memory that I would consider to be evil would be the soldier that was torturing the boy, and he was human.  Don’t ask me how I know that, I just do.  Must have come along with the memory.”

“What about the other older kid?” Sarah asked.  “Did he look like Dean also?”

Sam shook his head.  “He didn’t.”

“So, what now?” Dean wondered.  “Are we supposed to go and find one or more of these guys?  From what you’ve been saying, your dream didn’t leave us too many clues in that regard.”

“I don’t know,” Sam said.  “The only thing that I’m sure of is that I tapped into that kid’s memories for a reason.  I don’t know where he is or how old he is now, but there was a point to what happened last night.  It’s like a puzzle.  I just have to figure out how to put it together.”

“Great.”  Dean rolled his eyes.  “I hate it when your Shining develops a geek complex.”

“I’ll let you know when I figure things out more, okay?” Sam promised.  “Then again, I could be wrong.  It could be a fluke thing and I might not do that again.  I don’t think I’m off on my guess, but I guess you never can tell.”

“Close enough,” Dean said, shrugging.  He looked over towards the stairs.  “Marie’s probably wondering what the hell we’re talking about by now.”

“By now?”  Sam snorted.  “She’s most likely been wondering that since before she got upstairs.”

“And on that note, I’ll be in the kitchen getting some food ready,” Sarah declared.  She gave Sam a quick kiss before walking into the other room.

“Do you really believe that there’s more to this boy’s memory popping up in your brain or not?” Dean asked quietly.

“I do,” Sam confessed.  “Something’s going on, Dean, or it will be soon if it isn’t already.”

“Great.  Let the games begin,” Dean commented.  Sam just nodded.

TBC