Prophecy -- Chapter 16

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.).

Thank goodness things are starting to settle down a bit, Dylan thought to himself as he entered his apartment one night.  The Familiars haven’t tried anything since the disaster four days ago, I haven’t had one of those freaky nightmares…yeah, things are looking okay.

He went inside his bedroom and sat down on the bed with a sigh and an almost goofy smile on his face.  Tonight was a lot of fun.  Who knew that sorting through supplies could be so amusing?  It does help when you’ve got a friend who likes to stir things up with the woman that he’s head-over-heels for.  Nice one, Alec.  Max really appreciated you repeatedly throwing the paper balls at her head.  But if you hadn’t moved to try to get out of her way, then I wouldn’t have lost my balance and fallen on top of Audrey.  Damn, if only Max hadn’t seen us on the floor.  I was so close to kissing Audrey!  Oh, well.  That’s how things go, I guess.

Dylan kicked off his sneakers, snickering when one of them hit the wall on the other side of the room.  I really should be careful when I’m doing something like that.  Remember the time when you were nine and you walking through the courtyard back at Manticore and you were talking with 755 and 238 and you were just tossing stones around as you were going along and one of them hit that big asshole X5-409?  You could have been ten kinds of toast then!  The only reason you didn’t get beaten into a bloody pulp then was because Alec and Biggs happened to be in the area and Biggs held 409 back while Alec talked him down.

The alarm clock next to the bed suddenly went off and Dylan rolled his eyes as he shut it off.  Why is it that I’ve been designed with an IQ off the charts, I can hack into the most secure computer systems the world has ever seen, and accomplish other things that ordinary humans can only dream of but yet have trouble with a stupid alarm clock?  Well, next time steal one that wasn’t made in this country post-Pulse, you moron.  Whatever.  I’ll deal with that later.

Dylan got up and quickly got ready for bed.  He got underneath the covers and lay down, snuggling into the pillow.  It’s gonna be another long day tomorrow.  It should be interesting, though.  First things first:  get some rest!  He closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep.

The street was nearly deserted, but that wasn’t unusual for an post-Pulse out-of-the-way town like this one.  A tall, slender man with spiky hair and glasses walked down the street.  He stopped suddenly when he saw another man standing there.  The second man was roughly the same height as the first one, and his hair was nearly the same color, but was clearly broader in the shoulders and probably more muscular as well.  The first man squinted and the second, as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.  The second man’s face wasn’t visible, but he was clearly getting annoyed.

“Excuse me,” the first man finally spoke up.  “Do you…?”  He trailed off when something caught his eye and he turned around and paled when he saw Ames White walking up to him.  “What the hell?  Oh, God, I’ve got to—“

“Do nothing,” White said calmly, giving the man a violent shove backwards.  The second man started to make a move towards White, but White kicked him backwards.  White looked at the other person, his expression clearly surprised, before shrugging.  “What the heck.  This should hold me.”  He took out a gun from the waistband of his pants and shot the second man in the chest before turning his attention back to the first one.  “Now, this should send one nice message to 452.”  He raised his hand to shoot and…

Dylan jackknifed in bed, gasping.  Oh my God.  Oh my God.  He closed his eyes and tried to get himself under some control before he threw the covers off and quickly got dressed.  He nearly ran out of his apartment, down the hall, and up one floor before making his way over to a door midway down the hallway and knocking.  Moments later, it opened to reveal Alec, who frowned at the sight of his friend and immediately stepped aside to let Dylan in.

“What’s wrong?” Alec asked.

“I…”  Dylan couldn’t speak.  He paced around Alec’s living room, biting his lip.

Alec crossed his arms across his chest as he watched the X6.  “You had another one of those nightmares, didn’t you?”  Dylan nodded and Alec let his breath out.  “Shit.”

“Yeah, pretty much,” Dylan managed to say.

“What was it about?”  When Alec didn’t get a response, he reached out and put a hand on Dylan’s shoulder, stopping the teenager’s pacing.  “Dylan, what happened in this nightmare?”

Dylan took a deep breath.  “It was some street in this random little town that I’ve never seen before.  There were two men.  One of them was giving the other weird looks and just as he was saying something, that man White came in, shoves the first guy aside and kicks down the second one when that guy tried to step in and fight.  He takes a look at the second guy and looks a little surprised, then he shrugs and says ‘What the heck.  This should hold me’ and he shoots that man.  Then he turns back to the other person and says to him ‘Now, this should send one nice message to 452.’  White acts as if he was about to shoot guy number one and that was when the nightmare ended.”

“Damn,” Alec said, frowning.  “Okay, let’s take this one thing at a time.  The first man.  What did he look like?”

“He was about your height,” Dylan recalled.  “He had kind of a slender build from what I could tell.  He had spiky hair, it was about the same color as yours, maybe a little bit blonder, and he wore glasses.”

“Oh, lovely,” Alec muttered.  I guess White never got the memo about Max and Logan going splitsville.  Dylan gave him a puzzled look and Alec shook his head.  “Give me one second.”  He walked over and into his bedroom, returning a few moments later with a pen and a piece of paper in his hand, which was handed over to Dylan.  “Sketch the guy for me, buddy?”

“Yeah, no problem,” Dylan said.  He sat down on the couch and quickly drew the man as closely to what he remembered from his nightmare as he could.  He gave the picture one final glance before he handed it over to Alec.  “Here you go.  This is the man I saw.”

Alec looked over the paper.  “Yeah, just like I thought.  This is Logan Cale, otherwise known as Eyes Only.”

“Wait, didn’t you tell me before that he used to go with Max until she caught him cheating on her?” Dylan wondered.

“That’s him,” Alec confirmed.  “He’s still one of our biggest contacts, unfortunately.  Dix and Luke and those guys primarily work with Logan now.  This is not good.”  He frowned.  “Logan’s never going to end up on my favorite people in the world list, but I sure as hell don’t want him to end up on the wrong end of White’s gun.  What about the second man?  What did he look like?”

Dylan hesitated.  “I never got a decent look at him.  His back was towards me and even when White kicked him down and then shot him, I never got a good glance at his face.”

“But do you know anything about this guy?” Alec pressed on.  “Did you recognize him at all?”  Dylan shook his head and Alec frowned.  He does know something.  “Dylan, level with me.  Do you know who the man that White definitely killed in your nightmare is?”

“No,” Dylan said quickly.  He resumed his pacing.  “I don’t know.”

“Slow down and park yourself,” Alec said.  “At the risk of sounding as annoying as Sergeant Perkins did when he’d taught Urban Combat Strategy & Tactics, are you sure that you don’t know who mystery man number two was?  Get any clues?”

“No,” Dylan lied.

He does know.  Fuck, something’s very wrong.  “Dylan, who was it?  Was it somebody that we know?  Somebody close to us?” Alec asked.  Dylan bit his lip and Alec’s heart slammed into his throat.  Oh shit!  “Dylan…was it me?”

“I…”  Dylan shook his head.  “I’m not sure.  It was so close, it could have been, it scared the crap out of me.”  He clenched his shaking hands into fists.  “Something was just…damnit, Alec.  It could have been you.”

“Is that your final answer?” Alec joked, trying to lighten the tension.  Dylan glared at him and he winced.  “Sorry.  You do need to take a breath and relax before you go and flip out on everybody.”

“Good call,” Dylan admitted.  He sighed and sat down in Alec’s favorite armchair.  “To be absolutely honest, Alec, I don’t know.  I never saw the man’s face, but there was something about him.  The height, the hair color, and body type all matched yours perfectly.  The way he stood was just like the way that you do.  I could even tell when he was starting to get annoyed with Logan because it was just like your body language when you get annoyed at another person.  At the same time, though, something was off.  It was like you, but it wasn’t.  I don’t know how else to describe yet.  Maybe it was because I couldn’t see the face.  I just…I guess it could have been you, but it might have been somebody else.”

“Please don’t tell me that Manticore somehow managed to resurrect Ben before it went down for good,” Alec muttered.  “That would be something.”

Dylan shook his head.  “I don’t know.  The collar of the shirt that he was wearing was turned up but if that man was transgenic, he sure must have been having one hell of an off day because White took him down fairly easily.  Heck, his reaction time in going for White, while it was as good as I’ve ever seen coming from an ordinary human, was much too slow to have been a transgenic’s.  Then again, the man could have been a transgenic and have been injured and it just wasn’t readily apparent.  Injuries would almost definitely slow down a transgenic’s reaction time.  You remember when Biggs got hurt on that first mission that the three of us were assigned to together, don’t you?”  Dylan shook his head.  “Fuck, Alec, I’m getting confused.”

“If anybody’s first in line to be confused, it would be you,” Alec agreed.  They were quiet for several minutes.  “What are we going to do now?”

“You’re asking me that question?” Dylan managed a smirk.  “I thought that you were the one with a plan off the top of your head at all times.”

“Yeah, well, these aren’t exactly normal circumstances even by our standards, are they?” Alec pointed out.

“Got me there,” Dylan admitted.  He looked down for a moment and when he looked back up at Alec, his eyes were wide and frightened.  “Damn, Alec, I’m scared.  What if that was you that I saw get killed by White?”

“Then you just gave me a major heads-up,” Alec said.  “We can take steps to prevent this from happening.  One way or another, no matter who is involved, this won’t go down.  I promise.”

“I hope you can keep your promise,” Dylan commented.

Alec nodded.  “Yeah, me too.”

TBC